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ON THE RH I NE, 



AND OTHER SKETCHES OF 



EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 



LADY BLANCHE MURPHY, T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE, 
Mrs. SARAH B. WISTER, EDWARD KING, Etc. 






WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 





PHILADELPHIA: 
B. LIPPINCOTT & CO 

I 88 I. 



Copyright, 1880, by J. B. Lippincott & Co. 






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CONTENT.S. 



PACK 

DOWN THE RHINE Lady Blanche Murfhy. 5 

BADEN AND AELERHEILIGEN T. Adolphus Trollope. 75 

WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS ? Sarah B. Wisier. 86 

AMONG THE BISCAY ANS George L. Catlin. in - 

TROUVILLE L. Lejeime. 121 - 

THE JTALIAN LAKES Robert A. McLeod. 133 - 

EASTER ON THE RIVIERA W. D. R. 149 

A MONTH IN SICILY Alfred T. Bacon. 167 - 

^GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN J. A. Harrison. 208 - 

TRY NORWAY ! Olive Logan. 230 

HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES Edward King. 246 

ODD CORNERS OF AUSTRIA Edward King. 276 

ALONG THE DANUBE Edward King. 293 

DANUBIAN DAYS Edward King. 311 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



PART I. 



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merchants' exchange at CONSTANCE, WHERE THE COUNCIL MET. 



LIKE a certain old, eternally-young, 
and dearly-monotonous subject, the 
Rhine has been an inexhaustible theme 
for song, legend and romance. Old as 
is its place in literature, familiar as are 



its shores not only to the traveler in Eu- 
rope, but to the least well-read of the 
stay-at-homes, there is always something 
new to be said about it, or at least it can 
be viewed in a new aspect. Its early 

5 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



stages are certainly less well known than 
its middle portion — the Rhine of poetry 
and legend — but they are equally beau- 
tiful, and especially characterized by natu- 
ral scenery of the most picturesque kind. 
Historical memories are not lacking ei- 
ther, even within fifty miles of its rise in 
the glaciers of the Alps, while its early 
beauty as a mountain - torrent, dashing 
over the rocks of the Via Mala, has for 
some a greater charm than even its broad 
lake-like waters fringed with cathedrals, 
abbeys, and stately guildhalls, or its wind- 
ings among "castled crags." 

One branch of the river bursts from un- 
der a tumbled mass of ice and rock — one 
of those marvelous "seas" of ice which 
are the chief peculiarity of the Alps, and 
which sometimes, as in the case of the 
glacier of the Rheinwald, present among 
other features that of an immense frozen 
waterfall. Passing through the village of 
Hinterrhein, whose inhabitants are the 
descendants of a colony planted there 
by Barbarossa to guard the old military 
road over the Alps, and which boasts of 
a Roman temple and other less well-de- 
fined remains of human dwellings of the 
same period, the Rhine enters the grand 
gorge of the Via Mala, between Andeer 
and Rongella, on the road below the 
Splugen Pass and village. Every such 
pass has its Devil's Bridge or its "Hell" 
or its " Bottomless Pit," and tradition tells 
of demons who pelted each other with 
the riven masses of rock, or giants who 
in malice split the rocks and dug the 
chasms across which men dared no long- 
er pass. But it needs no such figures of 
speech to make a mountain-gorge one 
of the sublimest scenes in Nature, one 
which thrills the beholder with simple 
admiration and delight. The Via Mala 
is one of the most splendid of these 
scenes. A sheer descent of two thousand 
feet of rock, with clinging shrubs, and 
at the bottom the trunks of pines and 
firs that have lost their hold and grown 
into mossy columns stretched across the 
stream and often broken by its force ; a 
winding, dizzy road leading over single- 
arched bridges and half viaducts built 
into the black rock ; a foam-white stream 
below ; a succession of miniature water- 



falls, rapids and whirlpools ; spray and 
rainbow poised over the stream at inter- 
vals, and here and there the narrowing 
rocks bending their ledges together and 
wellnigh shutting out the sun ; the " Lost 
Hole," where tall firs, with their roots 
seemingly in space, stand up like a forest 
of lances, and the very formation of the 
rocks reminds one of gigantic needles 
closely-wedged together, — such are the 
features of the gorge through which the 
Rhine here forces its way. Then comes 
Zillis, a regular Swiss village, at the en- 
trance of the valley of Thusis, which is 
a broad green meadow dotted with cha- 
lets, a picturesque, domestic, rural land- 
scape, a bit of time set in the frame of 
eternity, and holding in its village chron- 
icles memories to which distance lends 
enchantment, but which, in view of the 
scenes we have just described, seem won- 
derfully bare of dignity. Here is the 
castle of Ortenstein, the warrior-abbey 
of Katsis, the Roman Realta, the castle 
of Rhaziinz, the bridge of Juvalta, and 
many castles on the heights overlook- 
ing the valley, which at the time of the 
"Black League" of the nobles against 
the " Gray Confederation " of the citizens 
(which gave its name to this canton, the 
Grisons) were so many rallying - points 
and dens of murder. There is romance 
in the legends of these castles, but one 
seldom stops to think of the robbery and 
lawlessness hidden by this romance. For 
these knights of the strong hand were 
no "Arthur's knights," defenders of the 
weak, champions of the widow and the 
orphan, gentle, brave and generous, but 
mostly oppressors, Bedo»ins of the Mid- 
dle Ages, ready to pounce on the mer- 
chandise of traveling and unarmed burgh- 
ers and defy the weak laws of an empire 
which could not afford to do without their 
support, and consequently winked at 
their offences. 

A legend of this part of the Rhine, 
less well known than those of the Lore- 
ley, Drachenfels or Bishop Hatto's Tow- 
er, belongs to Rhaziinz. After the feud 
had lasted long years between the nobles 
and the citizens, the young lord of this 
castle was captured in battle by the Gray 
Confederates, and the people's tribunal 



DOWN THE RHINE. 







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DOWN THE RHINE. 



condemned him to death. The execu- 
tioner stood ready, when an old retainer 
of the prisoner's family asked to be heard, 
and reminded the people that although 
the youth's hot blood had betrayed him 
into many a fray, yet some of his fore- 
fathers had been mild and genial men, 




JUVALTA, 

not unwilling to drink a friendly glass 
with their humbler neighbors. For old 
associations' sake let this custom be re- 
newed at least once before the execution 
of this last of the race of Rhaziinz : it 
was the first and last favor the youth, in 
his dying moments, requested of them. 



Stone drinking-vessels were brought : a 
regular carousal followed, and good-hu- 
mor and good fellowship began to soften 
the feelings of the aggrieved citizens. 
Then the faithful old servant began to 
speak again, and said it would be a pity 
to kill the young man, a good swordsman 
too, who, if they would 
spare his life, would join 
the Gray Confederacy and 
fight for instead of against 
the people — be their cham- 
pion, in a word, in all their 
quarrels, instead of their 
foe and their oppressor. 
He prevailed, and the 
youth, it is said, religiously 
kept the promise made for 
him. 

Passing the Toma Lake, 
a small mountain - tarn, 
whence rises one of the 
feeders of the Vorder- 
Rhein, and Dissentis, 
whose churches are crown- 
ed with Greek-looking cu- 
polas set upon high square 
towers, and whose history 
goes back to the ravages of 
Attila's barbarian hordes 
and the establishment of 
the Benedictine monastery 
that grew and flourished 
for upward of a thousand 
years, and was at last de- 
stroyed by fire by the sol- 
diers of the first French 
republic, we follow the 
course of the increasing 
river to where the smaller 
and shorter Middle Rhine 
falls into the main branch 
at Reichenau. The Vor- 
der-Rhein has almost as 
sublime a cradle as the oth- 
er branch. Colossal rocks 
and a yet deeper silence 
and solitude hem it in, for no road follows 
or bridges it, and it comes rolling through 
the wildest canton of Switzerland, where 
eagles still nest undisturbed and bears 
still abound, and where the eternal snows 
and glaciers of Erispalt, Badus and Fur- 
ka are still unseen save by native hunt- 



DOWN THE RHINE. 











Ks^*-- 



CITY GATE AT ILANZ. 



ers and herdsmen whose homes are far 
away. Here is the great Alpine water- 
shed, dividing the basin of the North 
Sea from that of the Mediterranean. But 
at Reichenau the Rhine absorbs the in- 
dividuahty of each of these mountain- 
torrents, and here we meet with mem- 
ories of the mediaeval and the modern 
world curiously mingled in the history 
of the castle, which has been an episco- 
pal fortress of the bishops of Chur, its 
founders, a lay domain when the lords of 
Planta owned it, and an academy or high 



school when Monsieur Chabaud, the di- 
rector, gave fourteen hundred francs a 
year salary to a young teacher of histo- 
ry, geography, mathematics and French 
who was afterward the citizen-king, Lou- 
is Philippe. Here is Martinsloch, where 
Suwarrow shamed his mutinous Cossacks 
who refused to attempt the passage of the 
Alps, by ordering a grave to be dug for 
him, throwing off his clothes and calling 
to his men to cast him in and cover him, 
"since you are no longer my children 
and I no longer your father." 



DOWN THE RHINE. 




TAMINA. SPRING. 



Ilanz is the first town 
on the Rhine, and has 
all the picturesqueness 
one could desire in the 
way of quaint architec- 
ture, bulbous cupolas, 
steep roofs with win- 
dows like pigeon-holes, 
covered gateways, and 
a queer mixture of 
wood and stone which 
gives a wonderfully old 
look to every house. 
Chur — or Coire, as it 
is more commonly 
called out of Germany 
and Switzerland — is of 
much the same charac- 
ter, an old episcopal 
stronghold, for its bish- 
ops were temporal lords 
of high renown and still 
higher power. Then 
the Rhine winds on to 
another place, whose 
present aspect, that of 
a fashionable watering- 
place, hardly brings its 
history as a mediaeval 

I spa to the mind. The 
healing springs at Ra- 
gatz were discovered 
by a hunter of the thir- 
teenth century on the 
land belonging to the 
great and wealthy Ben- 
edictine abbey. For 
centuries the spring, 
whose waters come 
from Pfaffers and Ta- 
mina, and are brought 
half a mile to Ragatz 
through iron pipes, 
was surrounded by 

I mean little huts, the 
only homes of the lo- 
cal health-seekers, ex- 
cept of such — and they 
were the majority — 
as were the guests 
of the abbey ; but when 
crowds increased and 
times changed, the 
abbey built a large 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



II 



guest-house at the springs. Now the 
place has passed into the hands of a 
brotherhood no less well known the 
world over, and who certainly, however 
well they serve us, give no room for ro- 
mance in their dealings with us. The 
promenade and hotels of the place rival 
Baden and Homburg, but the old spring 
of Tamina, in its wild beauty, still re- 
mains the same as when the mediaeval 
sportsman stumbled upon it, no doubt 
full of awe and trembling at the dark, 
damp walls of rock around him, where 
visitors now admire and sketch on the 
guarded path. The only other interest 
of Ragatz, except its scenery, is Schel- 
ling's grave and monument put up by 
Maximilian II. of Bavaria, his scholar 
and friend. 

Everywhere, as the Rhine flows on, 



the tourist notices its wonderful coloring, 
a light, clear green, which characterizes 
it at least as far as the Lake of Constance, 
iij whose neighborhood the vines first be- 
gin to bloom and become an important 
item in the prosperity of the country. 
Here too the river first becomes navi- 
gable, and the heavy square punt that 
ferries you over at Riithi, and the pictures 
of the old market-ships that preceded the 
first American steamer of 1824, and car- 
ried the vine produce to other and dryer 
places (for in Constance the land lay so 
low that cellars could not be kept dry, 
and the surplus of the vintage was at 
once exchanged for corn and fruit, etc.), 
are the first signs of that stirring com- 
mercial life which is henceforth insepa- 
rably connected with the great German 
stream. 




Five different governments crowd 
around and claim each a portion of the 
shores of the "great lake " of Germany. 
Yet it is not much more than forty 
miles long, with a breadth at its widest 
part of nine. In old Roman times its 
shores were far more beautiful and wor- 
thy of admiration than now. Then it was 
fringed by forests of birch, fir and oak, 
and its islands were covered with dense 
groves. The chief beauty of lowland is 
in its forests : when they are gone the 
bareness of the landscape is complete. 
Rocky mountains can afford to be tree- 
less, but to an artist's eye there is little 
beauty in treeless plains, and all the 
boasting of German enthusiasts about 
this lake cannot hide the fact that its 
shores are singularly low and bare. But 
if the landscape is tame, the historical 



recollections of the Lake of Constance 
are rich and interesting. The oldest 
town on its shores is Bregenz, the Bri- 
gantium mentioned by Pliny and Strabo, 
and Christianized by Saint Gall and Saint 
Columbanus, the Irish missionaries whose 
wanderings over Europe produced so 
many world-famous monasteries. The 
great abbey of St. Gall was not far from 
the lake, and Columbanus established 
his last monastery at Bobbio in Italy. 
Lindau ("the field of linden-trees"), al- 
most as old a city as Bregenz, built on 
an island and connected with the main- 
land by a long bridge over which the 
railway runs, was founded by the Ger- 
mans, and some of the earliest Christian 
converts built its churches and convents, 
while later on its commerce grew to be 
one of the most important in Germany, 



DOIVN 771 E RHINE. 




and raised the status of the city to the 
level of the members of the Hanseatic 



League ; but all this was 
lost in the Thirty Years' 
War, when it was devasta- 
ted and partly burnt : now 
it ranks as a third-rate Ba- 
varian town. But it is im- 
possible to string together 
all the remembrances that 
distinguish these lake- 
towns, many of them now 
refuges for Englishmen in 
narrow circumstances, 
their commerce dwindled, 
their museums the thing 
best worth seeing in them. 
We pass Arbon ; Fried- 
richshafen, the summer 
palace of the kings of Wiir- 
temberg, a sturdy, warring 
city in the Carlovingian 
times ; Meersburg, now a 
fishing-centre, once a 
stronghold of its martial 
bishops, and famous in 
later times as the residence 
of the baron of Lassberg, 
a modern savant and vir- 
tuoso of whom Germany 
is justly proud; and lastly 
Constance, the city of the 
Roman emperor Constan- 
tius, still beautiful and 
stately in its buildings. 
Charlemagne tarried here 
on his way to Rome on 
the occasion of his corona- 
tion, and many German 
kings spent Christmas or 
Easter within its walls. 
Here, in the large but low 
hall of the Kaufhaus, or 
Merchants' Exchange, the 
council of 1414 met, and 
never did the Greek coun- 
cils of the primitive 
Church present more va- 
ried and turbulent scenes. 
The walls are paneled and 
frescoed by Philip Schwor- 
en, an artist of Munich, 
and Frederick Pecht, a na- 
tive of Constance, with rep- 
resentations of these scenes, but it was 
rather a rough place in those days, and 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



13 



tapestries and dais, weapons and costly 
hangings, concealed the unfinished state 
of walls, floor and roof. The old city has 
other buildings as intimately connected 
with the council as this hall — the convents 



of the Dominican and Franciscan friars, 
each successively the prison of John Huss, 
the first containing a dungeon below the 
water-level and foul in the extreme, the 
second a better and airier cell for prison- 




HANS HOLBEIN. 



ers, as well as a great hall in which seve- 
ral sessions of the council took place, and 
where Huss was examined and condemn- 
ed ; the house where Huss first lodged with 
a good and obscure widow ; and three 
miles from the town the castle of Gott- 
lieben, also a prison of the Reformer, 
and for a short time of the deposed pope, 
John XXIII. Little more than a century 
later the Reformation had grown power- 
ful in Constance, and Charles V. besieged 
and, notwithstanding the desperate re- 
sistance of the burghers, took the town, 
but not before a rnost murderous defence 
had been made on the Rhine bridge, the 
picture of which, after the unsuccessful 
fight, reminds one of the heroic defence 
of the dyke at Antwerp against the Span- 
iards, and even of that other memorable 
event in Spanish history, the Noche Triste 
of Mexico. 

As we leave the lake two islands come 
in sight, Mainau and Reichenau, the lat- 
ter having a legend attached to it con- 
nected with the foundation of its abbey 
which is the counterpart of that of Saint 



Patrick and the snakes and vermin of 
Ireland. The "water was darkened by 
the multitude of serpents swimming to 
the mainland, and for the space of three 
days this exodus continued," whereupon 
Saint Firmin founded the abbey, which 
grew to such wealth and power, both as 
a religious house, a school for the nobility 
and a possessor of broad feudal domains, 
that the abbots used to boast in the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries that they could 
sleep on their own land all the way to 
Rome. The Rhine issues from the lake 
at Stein, a picturesque little town of 
Merovingian times, which has seen as 
many " tempests in a tea-cup " as any of 
its grander and more progressive rivals ; 
and not far off is the castle of Hohen- 
twiel, built into a towering rock, once 
the home of the beautiful and learned 
Hedwige, duchess of Swabia. We need 
not dwell on Schaff hausen, one of the best- 
known points of the river, an ancient town 
overgrown with modern excrescences in 
the way of fashionable hotels and Paris- 
ian dwellings. One of the features of 



14 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



these river -towns, when they are not 
"improved," is the crowding of houses 
and garden-walls sheer into the stream, 
leaving in many places no pathway on 
the banks, which are generally reached 
by steep, mossy steps leading from old 
streets or through private yards. 

We are nearing the four " forest towns " 
of the Habsburgs, at the first of which, 
Waldshut — where stood in Roman times 
a single fort to command the wilderness, 
much as the pioneers' outposts used to 
stand on the edge of the Western forests 
peopled with hostile Indians — the Aar, 
the Rhine's first tributary of any conse- 
quence, joins the great stream. Lauf- 
fenburg, Sackingen and Rheinfelden, the 
three other forest towns, each deserve a 
page of description, both for their scenery 
and their history, their past architectural 
beauties, and their present sleepy, mu- 
seum-like existence ; but rather than do 
them injustice we will pass on to Bale — 
or Basel, as it should be written, for the 
French pronunciation robs the name of 
its Greek and royal etymology from Ba- 
sileia. Basel was never lagging in the 
race of intellectual progress : her burgh- 
ers were proud and independent, not to 
say violent ; her university was eager 
for novelties ; her merchants spent their 
wealth in helping and furthering art and 
literature. The Rathhaus or guildhall is 
a gauge of the extent of the burgher su- 
premacy : all over Germany and the Low 
Countries these civic buildings rival the 
churches in beauty and take the place 
of the private palaces that are so special- 
ly the boast of Italian cities. Among 
the great men of Basel are Holbein and 
the scarcely less worthy, though less 
well-known artist, Matthew Merian, the 
engraver. Of the former's designs many 
monuments remain, though injured by 
the weather — a fountain with a fresco of 
the dance of the peasants, and some 
houses with mural decorations ascribed 
to him. Basel has its own modern ex- 
citements — races and balls and banquets 
— although the private life of its citizens 
is characterized by great simplicity. The 
profession of teaching is in such repute 
there that many rich men devote them- 
selves to it, and among the millionaires 



of the old city may be found not a ^&\n 
schoolmasters. As in Geneva, learning 
and a useful life are the only things on 
which the old families pride themselves. 

From Basel, whose every reminiscence 
is German, and whose Swiss nationality 
dates only from the epoch of the Refor- 
mation, the Rhine flows through the 
"storied" Black Forest, peopled with 
nixies and gnomes, the abode of the 
spectre woodcutter, who had sold all 
power of feeling human joys for the sake 
of gold, and who spent every night cut- 
ting down with incredible swiftness and 
ease the largest fir trees, that snapped 
like reeds under his axe. Old Breisach, 
with its cathedral of St. Stephen, and 
its toppling, huddled houses clustering 
around the church, is the most interest- 
ing town before we reach Freiburg. The 
tendency of mediaeval towns to crowd and 
heighten their houses contrasts sharply 
with the tendency of our modern ones 
to spread and broaden theirs. Defence 
and safety were the keynote of the old 
architecture, while display is that of ours, 
but with it has come monotony, a thing 
unknown to the builders of the Middle 
Ages. Houses of each century, or each 
period of art, have, it is true, a family 
likeness, but, like the forms of Venetian 
glass, a pair or a set have minute differ- 
ences of ornamentation which redeem the 
objects from any sameness. So it was 
with all mediaeval art, including that 
of building the commonest dwelling- 
houses : there was congruity, but never 
slavish uniformity. 

The first sight of Freiburg — we include 
it among Rhenish towns, though it is not 
on the Rhine — presents a very German 
picture. Old dormer windows pierce the 
high-pitched roofs ; balconies and gar- 
den trellises hang in mid-air where you 
least expect them ; the traditionary storks, 
the beloved of Hans Andersen, are real- 
ities even here on the tall city chimneys ; 
and no matter where you look, your eye 
cannot help falling on the marvelously 
high and attenuated spire of one of the 
finest cathedrals in the world. Artistic- 
ally speaking, this church has the unique 
interest of being the only completed work 
of ecclesiastical architecture that Ger- 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



^5 




INTKKTOR OF FREIBURG CATHKORAI.. 



i6 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



many possesses. The height of the spire 
and its position immediately above the 
great gateway produce here the same il- 
lusion and disappointment as to the size 
of the church which is proverbial as re- 
gards St. Peter's at Rome. This impres- 
sion soon disappears, and every step re- 
veals new beauties. Each cluster of sim- 
ple tall gray columns, supporting massive 
fourteenth-century arches, is adorned with 
one carved niche and its delicate little 
spire sheltering the stone statue of an 
apostle or evangelist ; the chancel is fill- 
ed with the canons' stalls, each a master- 
piece of wood-carving ; and at the east- 
ern end, beneath the three higher win- 
dows and separated from the wall, stands 
the mediaeval high altar with its three 
carved spires surmounting the reredos, 
and just below this a " triptych " of enor- 
mous size, a pictured altar-piece with 
folding-doors, the latter being painted 
both inside and out with scriptural sub- 
jects as quaintly interpreted by the de- 
vout painters of the early German school. 
But not only the nave, with its carved 
pulpit and canopy, its old dark benches, 
not renewed since the seventeenth cen- 
tury at least, and its crowds of worship- 
ers, is interesting to the sight-seer, but 
each side chapel, rich with what in our 
times would be thought ample decoration 
for a large church, is enough to take up 
one's day. In these and in the aisles lie 
buried the patrons, founders, defenders 
and endowers of the cathedral, while in 
the chapel of the university are laid the 
masters and doctors whose fame reached 
over the learned and civilized world of the 
Middle Ages, and whose labors Holbein 
no doubt flatteringly hinted at when he 
chose for the subject of his great altar- 
piece in this chapel the visit of the Wise 
Men of the East to the infant Saviour. 
In each of these chapels are wood-carv- 
ings of great beauty and variety, and 
stained glass w^indows whose colors are 
as vivid as they were four hundred years 
ago ; and in one is still preserved a heavy 
Byzantine cross of chased silver, the gift 
(or trophy) of a crusading knight, for 
Freiburg too "took the cross " under the 
enthusiastic direction of that great man, 
Bernard of Clairvaux. It is not often 



that such a building as this cathedral has 
such a worthy neighbor and companion 
as the beautiful exchange, or Kaufhaus, 
that stands opposite on the "platz." This, 
though of later date and less pure archi- 
tecture, is one of the most beautiful build- 
ings of its kind in Germany. The lower 
part reminds one of the doges' palace at 
Venice — a succession of four round arches 
on plain, strong, Saxon-looking pillars ; 
at each corner an oriel window with three 
equal sides and a little steep-pointed roof 
of its own shooting up to the height of 
the main roof. The great hall on the 
same level has a plain balcony the whole 
length of the building, and five immense 
windows of rather nondescript form and 
muUioned like Elizabethan windows, be- 
tween each of which is a statue under a 
carved canopy ; and these are what give 
the characteristic touch to the house. 
They represent the emperor Maximilian, 
lovingly called " the last knight," Charles 
v., " on whose dominions the sun never 
set," Philip I. and King Ferdinand. The 
color of the material of which this ex- 
change is built (red sandstone) increases 
the effect of this beautiful relic of the 
Middle Ages. But, though we should be 
glad to linger here and admire it at our 
leisure, there are other houses in the city 
that claim our attention as showing, in 
their less elaborate but perfectly tasteful 
decoration, the artistic instincts of those 
burghers of old. And the fountains too ! 
Not the bald, allegorical, monotonous 
and rarely-found (and when found only 
useless and ornamental) fountains of our 
new cities, but the lavishly-carved, artis- 
tic creations of an art-imbued age — the 
water free to all and flowing for use as 
well as for show, and the statues of civic 
patron-saints and occasionally men of 
local renown ; as, for instance, the single 
statue of a meditative monk, his left 
hand supporting his chin, and a closed 
book in his right hand, Berthold Schwarz, 
the inventor of gunpowder. 

From this inland side-trip we go back 
to the now broadening river, the part of 
the Rhine where the "watch" has been 
so often kept as well as sung — that part, 
too, where Roman forts were thickly 
strewn, and where the Merovingian and 



DOIVN THE KH:XE. 



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THE " DREI EXEN.' 



Carlovingian emperors fought and dis- 
puted about the partition of their inher- 
itances. But everywhere in this land of 

2 



Upper Alsace 1870 has effaced older 
memories, and modern ruins have been 
added to the older and more romantic 



i8 



DOWN THE RHINE 



ones. No foreigner can impartially de- 
cide on the great question of the day — 
/'. (?., whether German or French senti- 
ment predominates — while the interested 
parties themselves each loudly ignore the 
no doubt real claims of the other. As a 
simple matter of fact, Alsace is German 
by blood and by language, but race-dif- 
ferences are so often merged in other 
feelings, the product of kind treatment 
and domestic ties, that the sympathies 
of nations may be materially changed in 
less than a century. We certainly come 
across a good deal that is very French in 
the villages between New Breisach and 
Colmar : the blouse is the costume of the 
men ; the houses are painted in light col- 
ors, in contrast to their steep gray roofs ; 
the women bring refreshments out to the 
wagoners, and stop for a coquettish gos- 
sip in a light-hearted, pleasant, vivacious 
way not seen in other places, whose ma- 
trons seem graver and more domestic. 
But Colmar, in its streets, the names over 
the shops, the old corner-windows, is as 
German and antique, as good a "speci- 
men " city, as Nuremberg or Augsburg. 
Here is the artist's delight and the anti- 
quary's mine. Colmar, contemptuously 
styled " a hole" by the great Napoleon, 
was living enough at the time of the em- 
peror Frederick II., and was one of the 
prosperous, haughty, freedom - loving 
burgher cities to which the sovereigns 
so gratefully gave the name and priv- 
ileges of an " imperial " town. This city 
of ancient Germany is now one of the 
most stagnant among modern towns, just 
" advanced " enough to possess corner 
"loafers," and, we hope, to be ashamed 
of having publicly burnt the works of 
Bayle in the market-place ; but its archi- 
tectural beauties are such and so many 
that if you are on your way to Strassburg 
you had better deny yourself the pleas- 
ure of stopping here. Balconies and gal- 
leries strike the eye at every turn ; irreg- 
ular houses, their beams often visible ; 
doorways of wonderful beauty; and a 
population nearly as antique, the women 
carrying loads on their heads and wear- 
ing short dark stuff gowns, thick blue 
worsted stockings and wooden shoes. 
Of course the cathedral is the pride of 



the town, and it has some rather rare 
characteristics distinguishing it from the 
rest of the churches of this neighborhood, 
chiefly its simplicity of decoration. The 
impression of a noble simplicity is spe- 
cially borne in upon us by the aspect of 
the dark, broad chancel with its carved 
stalls, and little else in the way of orna- 
ment : the sculptured door leading to the 
sacristy unfortunately hides a remarkable 
work of early German art, the Virgin of 
the Rose-hedge, by Martin Schon. The 
tower of the cathedral has above it only 
a small building with a steep, irregular, 
tapering roof, and here sits the watch- 
man whistling on his cobbler's stool in 
a place that would be the envy of many 
a scholar pestered in his lower dwelling 
by inconsiderate visitors ; as, for instance, 
that perfect type of scholars, Isaac Ca- 
saubon, whose journal bears witness tc 
his yearning after more time and few- 
er admiring, consulting and tormenting 
friends. Not far from Colmar is a castle- 
ruin with three towers, the "Drei Exen," 
illustrating an old Alsatian proverb, the 
translation of which is, in substance, 

Three castles on one hill ; 
Three churches in one churchyard ; 
Three cities in one valley, — 
Such is Alsace everywhere. 

Other castles crown the heights above 
the villages of Kaisersberg and Rappolts- 
weiler, but we are getting tired of castles, 
and this region is abundant in old houses, 
the; shell of the old home-life which has 
changed so little in the country. What 
difi'erence is there between this ruddy, 
blue-eyed girl, with thick plaits of fair 
hair and utter innocence of expression, 
the mother of a future generation as 
healthy and sturdy and innocent as her- 
self, and her own grandmother at the 
same age three generations back ? Nei- 
ther the village interests nor the village 
manners have changed : placidly the life 
flows on, like that of the Rhine water 
itself, in these broad, level, fruitful plains 
between the Black Forest and the Vos- 
ges. And so we seem, in these various 
houses with wide gables turned to the 
street, cross-beams and galleries and un- 
expected windows, outside stairs of ston« 
or wood climbing up their sides, wide lovi 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



19 



doorways, tiny shrines set in the rough 
wall, and dizzy roofs pierced like dove- 
cotes — houses that remind us of Chester, 
the old English town that has suffered 
least from innovation, — in these we seem 
to see some part of the old tranquil home- 
life of this Alsatian people renewed and 
re-acted before our eyes. Again the same 
variety of beautiful 
houses will meet us at 
Strassburg, But the 
woods are no less 
lovely : old trees 
round the ruins of 
St. Ulrich, and on the 
way to the abbey of 
Dusenbach, and 
round the shores of 
the "White" and the 
"Black" Lake, bring 
to the mind a yet old- 
er picture of German 
life, that of the free 
Teutons of Tacitus, 
the giant men who 
made it so important 
to the Romans to 
have the Rhine, the 
great natural high- 
way, strongly fortified 
from its sources to its 
mouth. 

Hoh-Konigsburg, a 
splendid ruin, said to 
be the loveliest in Al- 
sace, is now the prop- 
erty and the pride of 
the commune of that 
name, so that the 
victory of the present 
over the past is also 
represented in these 
living panoramas be- 
fore us, for there is 
deep meaning in the 
possession by the people, as an artistic 
show, of the very stronghold which was 
once their bane and their terror. Then 
we run through Schlettstadt, with its sedgy 
banks, among which herons and storks 
are picking up their daily bread : deep 
shadows of old trees hide the blank walls 
on the river-side, and its cathedral tow- 
ers high above the mingled steeples and 



cupolas and nearly as high roofs of some 
of the larger buildings, while we think 
of its successful warfare with the bishops 
of Strassburg, its firm adherence in the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the 
imperial cause, of its sieges and fires, and 
also its famous "academy" and library; 
not forgetting, however, its shame in the 




ST. THOMAS'S CHURCH, STRASSBURG. 



sixteenth century, when the Jews wete 
more signally persecuted here than in 
many other towns — at a time, too when 
the fanaticism that had driven so many 
to change their faith should have taught 
both parties of Christians some home- 
lessons. Its neighbor, Strassburg, has 
nearly as bad a record, but what with 
the beauty of the latter and its recent 



DOIVN THE RHINE. 




FERKEl-MARKT (PIG-MAKKET) AT STRASSBUKC 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



stormy history, its sins are the last things 
a traveler thinks of. Its cathedral and 
its clock have been fully described, but 
other churches of the old city are well 
worth a visit, that of St. Thomas being 
a specimen of an architecture essential- 
ly Christian and anterior to the Gothic, 
the same whose perfection is seen in 
many churches in Umbria and Tuscany 
and Romagna, before the miserable ma- 
nia of the Renaissance style grew up. 
What was pardonable in a palace was 
monstrous in a church, but there was 
an evil age just before the Reformation, 
when, if certain learned and elegant and 
pagan prelates had had their way, Chris- 
tianity would have been condemned as 
"barbarism." They were the Voltaires 
of their day, the disciples of a cultured 
infidelity which brought on the great rent 
between Latin and Teutonic Christianity. 
In Strassburg we have the river 111 and 
its canal joining the Rhine, and Venice- 
like scenes, narrow quays, clumsy, heavy 
punts, fanciful chimney - stacks, crazy, 
overhanging balconies, projecting win- 
dows, a stirring human tide, voices and 
noises breaking the silence, an air of un- 
consciousness of beauty and interest, an 
old-world atmosphere ; but there is a new- 
er side, less attractive, the Place Broglie, 
crowded with Parisian cafes with all their 
tawdry paraphernalia, and prim white 
square houses, proud of their wretched 
uniform, like a row of charity-school 
children in England. Here is the fash- 
ionable centre, the lounging, gossiping 
dandyism and pretension of the modern 
world ; but, thank Heaven ! it is only 
an excrescence. Burn down this part, 
and the town would look as large and as 
important, for at every turn of more than 
two-thirds of the old area you are met 
by the living pictures that make these 
market-places, crooked streets and hid- 
den chapels so familiar to the heart. The 
rerkelmarkt, or "pig- market," though 
not in the most famous quarter of the 
town, is remarkable for its old gabled, 
galleried houses, while the view of the 
great spire of the cathedral is also good : 
not far, again, is a thirteenth - century 
house, with two stories in the gable and 
three below, besides the ground-floor. 



which is a shop ; and even many of the 
common houses, not specially pointed 
out to the tourist, are beautified by some 
artistic ironwork about the doors, some 
carved gateway or window, some wall- 
niche with a saint's statue, or a broad 
oak staircase as noble in proportions 
and beautiful in detail as if it were in 
a princely abode. The absence of all 
meanness, of all vulgarity, of all shams, 
is what strikes one most in examining 
mediseval domestic architecture. Would 
we could go to school again in that re- 
gard ! Just outside Strassburg we come 
upon a path leading through beech-woods 
upward toward rocky ledges and walls 
and a convent; not a ruined one this 
time, but a most frequented and friend- 
ly place, built on the top of a hill and 
presided over by a hospitable sisterhood. 
This is the scene of the life-history and 
legends of Saint Ottilia, and the spring 
for eye-diseases has been from time im- 
memorial connected with her. The lit- 
tle chapel over the spring has the charm 
of small, unpretending, common places, 
where no show is made and no conven- 
tional admiration expected. Just as a 
speaker pauses here and there in his 
speech, expecting applause for such and 
such a popular phrase or striking sensa- 
tionalism, so is our admiration as travel- 
ers regulated and bespoken beforehand. 
Here no man with any pretension to edu- 
cation dare pass in silence or let out a 
criticism : some things are sacred, like 
the tradition of the beauty of a faded 
society -queen. "What has been must 
always be." But what a relief to find 
some places you are not expected to go 
into ecstasies about ! And they are gen- 
erally worthy of more attention than they 
get, and if churches they are invariably 
more likely to move you to devotion. 
This has been my experience in Europe. 
The great pageants, gorgeous processions, 
etc. leave the soul cold, but an empty 
church, a sparsely - attended service, a 
lack of music, a quiet frame of mind, 
unstrained by rushing after this or that 
picture, this or that monument, — such 
are the things one remembers with thank- 
fulness. 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



PART II. 




RHEIN-SCHNAKEN." 



PAST the ruins of Madenburg, we 
follow the emperor Rudolph's road 
to Spires (German Speyer), whose cathe- 
dral is the Westminster Abbey of the 
German Empire. The tombs of empe- 
rors and empresses and their children — 
Swabians, Habsburgs, Nassaus — line the 
aisles of the cathedral, whose massive 
Romanesque style shows through the 
more elaborate, fanciful and somewhat 

22 



disappointing restoration of Louis I. of 
Bavaria ; for under his hands the old, 
grim, stately church has come to wear 
something of a modern look. But the 
historic recollections are many, and in 
St. A.fra's chapel we recognize the spot 
where for five years lay the coffin of 
Henry IV., the vault where his forefath- 
ers slept being closed to his body by the 
ecclesiastical censures he had incurred 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



23 



after his forced reconciliation with his 
nobles and the Church. 

And now comes the quick - flowing 
Neckar, rushing into the Rhine, and 
bidding us go a little up its course to 
where Heidelberg, its castle, its univer- 
sity, its active life and its beautiful past, 
make altogether a place that I should be 
inclined, from my own recollections, to 
call the pleasantest in Germany, and 




THE GREAT TUN, HKinET.KERr, CASTl.E. 



which is certainly not one of the least 
important in the life that distinguishes 
Germany at this time. And what kind 
of impression does it make at first on a 
stranger? A German traveler says that 
it presented to him a marked contrast 
with Munich, where, although it is an 
art-centre, a sort of deadness to intel- 
lectual concerns characterizes all but the 
art-students and foreign visitors. Even 
the Heidelberg porters are lively and crit- 



ical, boast of Bunsen and Vangerov/, 
and speak proudly of "our" professors 
and of the last examinations. They do 
more than merely make money out of 
their show-city, as do the good-natured 
but slower-witted Munichers, but some 
enthusiastic Rhinelanders claim for this 
difference of temperament a reason not 
wholly sesthetic — /. e., the influence of 
Rhine wine, transformed generation after 
generation into 
Rhine blood. 
The foreign trav- 
eler probably 
misses all these 
details, and for 
him Heidelberg 
is the student- 
city and the city 
of the most re- 
nowned ruin in 
Germany. He 
will find that all 
the beauty he has 
read of is real : 
the castle is all 
that has been 
said and sung of 
it, with its tower 
shattered and 
crumbling ; its 
various facades, 
particularly the 
Friedrichsbau 
and that named 
after Emperor 
Otto Henry ; its 
courtyard with 
pointed arches ; 
its ivy-grown 
fountain; its 
elaborate Renais- 
sance niches and 
armor-clad statues ; its modern loungers 
sitting over their Rhine wine in chairs 
that English collectors would give three 
or four guineas apiece for ; its tangle of 
flowers and bushes ; its crimson flush 
when English tourists spend their money 
in illuminating it with Bengal lights ; its 
adjacent gardens, where a nearly perfect 
band plays classical music to critics who 
are none the less discerning because they 
look lost in tobacco - smoke and beer- 



24 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



fumes ; its background of Spanish chest- 
nut woods, where I saw the pale-green tas- 
sels of the blossoms still hanging among 
the broad leaves that had just reached 
their summer depth of color, and where 
wild legends place a "Devil's Den" and 
a Wolf Spring, a 
brook where a wolf ^ ~ 
is said to have torn 
to pieces the en- 
chantress Zetta ; — 
above all, its match- 
less view sheer 
down a wall of rock 
into the rushing 
Neckar flood, over 
the vast plain be- 
yond, and over a 
wilderness of steep 
roofs of thirteenth - 
and fourteenth-cen- 
tury houses. All 
this is but a faint 
description of the 
impression Heidel- 
berg leaves on the 
mind. It would be 
leaving out an im- 
portant "sight " not 
to mention the fa- 
mous "tun," still 
stored, but empty, 
in the cellars of the 
castle, and the lit 
tie guardian of the 
treasure, the gnome 
carved in wood, 
whose prototype 
was the court -fool 
of one of the Nas- 
sau sovereigns, and 
whose allowance 
was no less than 
htteen bottles a 
day. 

But the place has 
other interests, 
which even the 

donkey - riders, whom the natives por- 
tray as rather eccentric in dress and 
behavior, must appreciate. The high 
school, which has survived all the deso- 
lations and wrecks of the Thirty Years' 
war and the still more cruel French war 



under Louis XIV. and his marshal Tu- 
renne, dates as far back as 1386, and the 
university into which it has grown has 
been since the beginning of this century 
the cause of the upward growth and pros- 
perous restoration of the town. The Ger- 




THE SHATTERED TOWER, HEIDELBERn. 



man student-life has been as much de 
scribed, though perhaps never so truly, 
as the life of the Western frontiers and 
prairies, and I will give but one glimpse, 
because it is all I know of it, though tha 
glimpse is probably but the outcome ol 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



an exceptional phase of student - life. 
The person who described the scene and 
saw it himself is trustworthy. He had 
been living some months at Heidelberg, 
on the steep slope leading up to the cas- 
tle (the short cut), and one night, on 
locking out of his window, he saw the 
glare of torches in a courtyard below, 
several houses, perhaps even streets, off, 
for the town is built on various levels up 
the rock. Here were several groups of 
young men, evidently students, dancing 
in rings and holding torches, and the 
scene looked wild and strange and some- 
what incomprehensible. Next day the 
spectator found out that this was the 
peculiar celebration of a death by a club 
whose rules were perhaps unique. It 
was an inner sanctum of the ordinary 
student associations, something beyond 
the common dueling brotherhoods, more 
advanced and more reckless — a club in 
which, if any member quarreled with an- 
other, instead of settling the matter by a 
duel, the rivals drew lots to settle who 
should commit suicide. This had hap- 
pened a day or so before, and a young 
man, instead of standing up as usual to 
be made passes at with a sword that would 
at most gash his cheek or split his nose, 
had shot himself through the head. Even 
m that not too particular community great 
horror prevailed, and the youth was de- 
nied Christian burial ; so that his father 
had to come and take away the body in 
secret to convey it to his own home. This 
heathenish death led to an equally hea- 
thenish after - carousal, the torchlight 
dance winding up the whole, not per- 
haps inappropriately. 

Heidelberg has a little Versailles of its 
own, a prim contrast to its noble chest- 
nut-groves, yet not an unlovely spot — the 
garden of Schwetzingen, where clipped 
alleys and rococo stonework make frames 
for masses of brilliant -colored flowers; 
but from here we must skim over the 
rest of the neighborhood — gay, spick- 
and-span Mannheim, busy Ludwigshafen 
and picturesque, ruin - crowned Neckar- 
steinach, where, if it is autumn, we catch 
glimpses of certain vintage-festivals, the 
German form of thanksgiving and har- 
vest home. But of this we shall see 



more as we journey downward and reach 
the far-famed Johannisberg and Riides- 
heim. Still, we cannot forget the vine- 
yard feature of Rhine and Neckar and 
Moselle scenery, for it follows us even 
from the shores of the Lake of Constance, 
and the wine keeps getting more and 
more famous, and the wine-industry and 
all its attendant trades more important, 
as we go on. The ruins of monasteries 
are sprinkled among the vine -terraces, 
for the monks were the earliest owners, 
introducers and cultivators of the grape 
— greatly to their credit at first, for it 
was a means of weaning the Christian- 
ized barbarians from hunting to tilling 
the earth, though in later years there 
grew terrible abuses out of this so-called 
" poetic " industry. If I were not pledged 
to eschew moralizing, I should like to 
have my say here about the nonsense 
written from time immemorial about 
"wine, woman and song" — rather worse 
than nonsense, because degrading to both 
the latter — but in speaking of the Rhine 
one cannot but glance at its chief trade, 
though one can refrain from rhapsodies 
about either the grape or the juice. The 
fact is, the former is really not lovely, 
and th_g artificial terraces of slaty debris, 
the right soil and the right exposure for 
the crop, are indeed quite unsightly. 
The beauty of the vine is far better seen, 
and is indeed ideal, in Southern Italy, 
where the grapes hang from luxuriant 
festoons, cordages of fruit swinging like 
hammocks from young poplars, and 
sometimes young fruit trees, while be- 
neath grow corn and wheat. The wine, 
I believe, is mediocre — and so much the 
better — but the picture is beautiful. In 
Northern Italy the thrifty, practical Ger- 
man plan is in vogue, and the ideal beau- 
ty of vines is lost. But where is the vine 
loveliest to my mind? Out in the for- 
ests, where it grows wild, useless and 
luxuriant, as I have seen it in America, 
the loveliest creeper that temperate climes 
possess — a garden and a bower in itself. 
Following the course of the Neckar, 
and broadening for forty miles before 
reaching the Rhine, lies the Odenwald, 
the "Paradise of Germany" — a land of 
legends, mountains and forests, whose 



26 



DOWN THE KHIXE. 




very name is still a riddle which some 
gladly solve by calling the land " Odin's 
Wood," his refuge when Christianity dis- 



placed him. riere, under the solemn 
beeches, the most beautiful tree of the 
Northern forests, with smooth, gray, 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



27 



column-like trunk and leaves that seem 
the very perfection of color and texture, 
lie the mottled deer, screened by those 
rocks that are called the waves of a 
"rock ocean," and lazily gazing at the 
giant trunk of a tree that for many years 
has lain encrusted in the earth till as 
many legends have accumulated round 
it as mosses have grown over it — a tree 
that California might not disown, and 
which is variously supposed to have been 
part of a Druidical temple or part of an 
intended imperial palace in the Middle 
Ages. But as we climb up Mount Meli- 
bocus, and look around from the Tau- 
nus to the Vosges, and from Speyer to 
Worms and golden Mayence, we see a 
ruined castle, that of Rodenstein, with a 
more human interest in its legend of a 
rival Wild Huntsman, whose bewitched 
hounds and horns were often heard in 
the neighborhood, and always before 
some disaster, chiefly a war, either 
national or local. This huntsman wore 
the form of a black dog in the daytime, 
and was the savage guardian of three 
enchanted sisters, the youngest and love- 
liest of whom once tried to break the 
spell by offering her love, her hand and 
her wealth to a young knight, provided 
he could, next time he saw her, iii the 
form of a snake, bear her kiss three 
times upon his lips. He failed, how- 
ever, when the ordeal came, and as the 
serpent - maiden wound her cold coils 
around him and darted out her forked 
tongue, he threw back his head and 
cried in an agony of fear, " Lord Jesus, 
help me !" The snake disappeared : 
love and gold were lost to the youth and 
freedom to the still spellbound woman. 
The legend goes no further, unless, like 
that of the ruined castle of Auerbach, it 
hints at the present existence of the for- 
lorn enchanted maidens, yet waiting for 
a deliverer ; for at Auerbach the saying 
is that in the ruins dwells a meadow- 
maiden whose fate it is to wait until a 
child rocked in a cradle made of the 
wood of a cheny tree that must have 
grown on the meadow where she was 
first mysteriously found, came himself to 
break her invisible bonds ; and so every 
good German (and not seldom the stran- 



ger) that visits Schloss Auerbach does so 
with a pious intention of delivering the 
maiden in case he himself may unawares 
have been rocked in a cradle made of 
the wonder-working cherry-wood. If the 
reader is not tired of legends, this neigh- 
borhood affords him still another, though 
a less marvelous one, of a young girl of 
the noble Sickingen stock who lost her- 
self in a great wood, and who, after be- 
ing searched for in vain, was guided 
homeward late at night by the sound 
of the convent -bell of St. Gall's (not 
the famous monastery of that name) ; 
in thanksgiving for which the family offer- 
ed for all coming ages a weekly batch of 
wheaten loaves to be distributed among 
the poor of the parish, and also made it 
customary to ring the great bell every 
night at eleven o'clock, in remembrance 
of the event, and likewise as an ear-bea- 
con to any benighted traveler who might 
happen to be in the neighborhood. 

At Ladenburg we pass one of those 
churchyards that are getting familiar to 
us at this stage of Rhine-journeying, full 
of crosses and crucifixes with quaint lit- 
tle roofs over them ; and at Weinheim 
we come upon as antiquated a spot as 
any that exists in our day, a wilderness 
of old houses, each one of which is worth 
a detailed picture ; then at Unterland- 
enbach we find the most famous of the 
Bergstrasse wines ; and hurrying through 
modern Darmstadt, with its Munich-rival- 
ing theatre, museum and galleries, and 
its heart-core of old houses smothered 
among ' ' classicalities ' ' in white plaster, we 
come to the old episcopal city of Worms, 
where no beautiful scenery distracts the 
mind from the mighty human recollec- 
tions of Luther and the Diet and the first 
strong symptoms of life in the Reform- 
ation. The Jews' burial-place, however, 
brings to mind the one-sidedness of the 
freedom of conscience proclaimed by the 
Reformers, who could be as intolerant as 
their forerunners, the powerful bishops 
of Worms and the persecutors of the 
Jews in the Middle Ages, as the Luther- 
ans were in the days of the Renaissance. 
The massive Roman character of the 
cathedral is mingled with something 
airier and more Gothic, but still remains 



28 



DOlViV THE RHINE. 




FRIEDRICHSBAU (OR FREDERICK'S BUILDING), HEIDELBERG CASTLE. 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



29 



chiefly a model of the basihca style, with 
its low, strong round arches, and grafted 
on these the later, yet not mediaeval, 
figures of distorted, dwarfed, monstrous 
animal forms, supposed to represent the 
demons of heathendom conquered by, 
and groaning in vain under the yoke of, 
the Christian Church. But no amount 
of vague description will bring before 
the mind's eye these great cathedrals, 
whereas slighter and lesser subjects are 
easily made lifelike with the pen ; so, pass- 
ing by the fountains, the market-places, 
the ancient fortifications and the splen- 
did modern monument of Luther sur- 
rounded by his brother Reformers and 
their supposed predecessors (altogether, 
a rather fanciful and motley grouping, 
morally speaking), we come to the every- 
day life of the city of to-day. It is strange 
how many of these old German towns 
are "resuscitated" (I wish I could find 
a better word for the meaning), having 
been wholly crushed in the terrible French 
war under Louis XIV., and having slow- 
ly sunk into a seemingly hopeless state 
of stagnation, and yet within the last 
fifty years having gathered up their frag- 
ments anew and started into life again. 
Commerce, railways, etc. had much to 
do with this new lease of life, but intel- 
lectual progress has had almost as large 
a part in this new birth of the dead cities. 
Learning grew popular — what a signif- 
icant difference there is between this fact 
and that of learning growing fashion- 
able ! — and men awoke to the need as 
well as the glory of knowledge — a weap- 
on which, far more than the sword, qui- 
etly prepared Germany for the onward 
stride she has now taken. If the mental 
progress had not been going on so stead- 
ily for so many years, the late political 
triumphs could not have happened. 

The old dominions of Worms had the 
poetic name of Wontiegau, or the " Land 
of Delight;" and since the flat, sedgy 
meadows and sandy soil did not warrant 
this name, it was no doubt given on ac- 
count of the same ample, pleasant fam- 
ily-life and generous hospitality that dis- 
tinguishes the citizens of Worms to this 
day. There were — and are — merchant- 
princes in Germany as well as in Genoa, 



Venice, Bruges, Antwerp and London of 
old, and though life is even now simpler 
among them than among their peers of 
other more sophisticated lands, still it is 
a princely life. The houses of Worms 
are stately and dignified, curtained with 
grapevines and shaded by lindens : the 
table seems always spread, and there is 
an air of leisure and rest which we sel- 
dom see in an American house, however 
rich its master. The young girls are ro- 
bust and active, but not awkward, nor is 
the house-mother the drudge that some 
superfine and superficial English obser- 
vers have declared her to be. We have 
begun to set up another standard of wo- 
man's place in a household than the beau- 
tiful, dignified Hebrew one, and even the 
mediaeval one of the times whence we 
vainly think we have drawn our new 
version of chivalry toward womankind. 
But in many places, even in the "three 
kingdoms," the old ideal still holds its 
place, and in the Western Highlands the 
ladies of the house, unless demoralized 
by English boarding-school vulgarities, 
serve the guest at table with all the grace 
and delicacy that other women have lost 
since they have deputed all hospitality 
save that of pretty, meaningless speeches 
to servants. In Norway and Sweden the 
old hospitable, frank customs still pre- 
vail, and in all simplicity your hostess, 
young or old, insists on doing much of 
your "valeting ;" and while we need not 
imitate anything that does not " come 
natural" to us, we should surely refrain 
from laughing at and stigmatizing as bar- 
baric any social customs less artificial 
than our own. And indeed Germany is 
blesl in the matter of good housekeepers, 
who are no less good wives, and espe- 
cially discerning, wise and sympathizing 
mothers. A few of the lately-translated 
German novels show us the most delight- 
ful and refined scenes of German home- 
life, and now and then, though seldom, 
a stranger has a glimpse of some of these 
German homes, whether rich or not, but 
generally not only comfortable, but cul- 
tured. To some English minds — and 
we fear also to some American ones — 
of the "hot-house " order there is some- 
thing absolutely incompatible between 



3° 



DOWN THE RHINE. 




THE COURTYARD, HFTDFI HFRG CASFLF 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



31 



grace and work, study and domestic 
details ; but, letting practical Germany 
alone, have they ever read Eugenie de 
Guerin's life and journal, to admire which 
is almost as much a "hall-mark " of cul- 
ture as to enjoy Walter Scott and appre- 
ciate Shakespeare ? And if they have, 
do they not remember how the young 
housekeeper sits in the kitchen watching 
the baking and roasting, and reading 
Plutarch in the intervals ? And do they 
not remember her washing-days ? Every 
thrifty housewife is not an Eugenie de 
Guerin, but that any absolute incongru- 
ity exists between housework and brain- 
work is a notion which thousands of well- 
educated women in all countries must, 
from experience, emphatically deny. 

Nor is elegance banished from these 
German homes : if there are libraries 
and museums within those walls, there 
are also drawing-rooms full of knick- 
knacks, and bed-rooms furnished with 
inlaid foreign woods and graceful con- 
trivances covered by ample curtains, pret- 
ty beds shaped cradlewise, devoid of the 
angles we seem to find so indispensable 
to a bed, and corner closets fluted inside 
with silk or chintz and ornamented with 
airy vallances or bowed -out gilt rods. 
Glass doors leading into small, choicely- 
stocked conservatories are not uncom- 
mon, or even that crowning device of 
artistic luxury, an immense window of 
one undivided sheet of plate-glass, look- 
ing toward some beautiful view, and thus 
making a frame for it. All this sounds 
French, does it not ? but Aix and Cologne 
and Mayence and Frankfort and Bremen 
are genuine German cities, and it is in 
the burgher houses that you find all this. 
Even very superficial observers have no- 
ticed the general air of health, prosperity 
and comeliness of the people. Washing- 
ton Irving, who traveled in the Rhine- 
land fifty-five years ago, when critical in- 
quiry into home-life was not yet the fash- 
ion for tourists, speaks in his letters of 
the peasantry of the Bergstrasse being 
"remarkably well off," of their "com- 
fortable villages buried in orchards and 
surrounded by vineyards," of the "coun- 
try-people, healthy, well-clad, good-look- 
ing and cheerful." Once again he speaks 



of the comeliness of the Rhine peasants, 
"particularly on the lower part of the 
Rhine, from Mayence downward," and 
elsewhere of the cottages as so surround- 
ed by garden and grass-plat, so buried 
in trees, and the moss-covered roofs al- 
most mingling and blending with the sur- 
rounding vegetation, that the whole land- 
scape is completely rustic. " The orchards 
were all in blossom, and as the day was 
very warm the good people were seated 
in the shade of the trees, spinning near 
the rills of water that trickled along the 
green sward." This, however, was in 
Saxony, where the landscape reminded 
him much of English scenery. Then 
of the higher middle classes, the bank- 
ers of Frankfort, he speaks as cultured, 
enlightened, hospitable, magnificent in 
their " palaces, . . . continually increas- 
ing." And these are but cursory pen- 
cilings, for everywhere he was rather on 
the watch for the antique than mindful 
of human and progressive peculiarities. 

Mayence, by the bye (or Mainz, as it 
is in the mother- tongue), was once call- 
ed the "golden," partly for its actual 
wealth of old, partly for its agricultural 
and vineyard riches, and partly as the 
centre of an immense river-trade that 
enriched every city on the Rhine, from 
Worms to Cologne especially. Here 
the archbishops reigned paramount sove- 
reigns, and here were fought many hard 
battles between what called itself the 
Church and the people. Mayence once 
cut itself off for several years from all 
Christian services, and held its spiritual 
sovereign at bay, though now its relig- 
ious spirit is undeniable ; but then how 
much have the representatives of the 
Church changed! To-day they are 
humble, poor and accessible to all : then 
they were haughty, warlike, despotic and 
rich. To-day, they are wellnigh perse- 
cuted, and the hearts of the people gen- 
erously turn to them, and if principle and 
policy can ever be said to go together, it 
is so in this case. But let the circum- 
stances be reversed : I wonder would the 
lesson be remembered? Here, where 
Archbishop Willigis in the tenth century 
persecuted the Jews, and made up to the 
city for it by building the grand St. Ste- 



32 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



phen's and the earliest part of the cathe- 
dral ; here, where terrific invasions of 
barbarians and massacres of Christians 
gave color to the legends that ascribe 
the foundation of the city to a Trojan 
hero, Moguntius, or to an exiled wizard 
of Treves, fourteen hundred years before 
the Christian era ; here, where ecclesias- 
tical quarrels and popular tumults were 
things of daily occurrence, and where 
one of the best minnesingers, Henry, 
count of Meissen, surnamed Frauenlob, 
or "Ladies' Praise,", was carried to his 
grave in the cathedral by twelve maid- 
ens of the town, — there stirs to-day a 
spirited though commonplace life, the 
link of which with the old life lies in 
the invention commemorated by Guten- 
berg's monument, one of Thorwaldsen's 
best works. Old and new jostle each 
other in our bewildered minds. There 
are drawbridges, towers and gates still 
to be seen ; the old city is a future im- 
portant military depot; the .Carnival 
scenes merrily take us back to the cos- 
tume if not the manners of the Middle 
Ages ; and some of the old Meenzer dia- 
lect is still preserved among the quaint 
knitting-women with frilled caps and un- 
gainly baskets who drive a small trade 
in stout stockings for the country-people 
as they jog in to market. Then we pass 
St. Alban's church, where Charlemagne's 
wife Fastrada is buried, and where her 
husband drew from her dead finger an 
enchanted ring which he was glad after- 
ward to throw into the moat at his castle 
of Nieder-Ingelheim ; and here now is a 
procession coming out of the church, and 
the people devoutly following, all chant- 
ing the solid old hymns, hundreds of 
years old, which are still the musical A, 
B, C of every German child. How dif- 
ferent to what we call hymn - singing ! 
The Rhineland is intensely Catholic in 
this neighborhood, and since the unwise 
■'Falk laws" many who were before in- 
different have rallied to their childhood's 
faith and stood forth as its fiercest cham- 
pions. Perhaps just now you would not 
meet a procession, but a few years ago 
they were common in the streets of May- 
ence. The cathedral, spite of all polit- 
ical drawbacks, is being carefully re- 



stored, and the choir, which I remember 
as especially fine, is looked upon as a 
triumph of reverent and congruous res- 
toration. 

On the shores of the river we come 
upon purely modern life again — the ho- 




AN ALLEY IN THE GARDEN OF SCHWETZINGEN. 

tels, the quays, the tourists, the steam- 
ers, and the Rhem-schnaken , a species 
of "loafer" or gossip who make them- 
selves useful to passengers when the boats 
come in. These are often seen also al 
Biebrich, the old palace of the Nassaus, 
now become the property of the city, 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



zz 



and partly a military school, while the 
gardens have become the fashionable 
promenade of Mayence. The formal 
alleys and well-kept lawns, with the dis- 
tant view of the Taunus and the Oden- 
wald on one side, and a glimpse of the 




CATHEDRAL OF ViTORMS. 

opening Rheingau, a famous gorge of 
the Rhine, on the other, make it a beauti- 
ful resort indeed, exclusive of the interest 
which the supposed derivation of its name 
gives it — i. e., the "place of beavers," an 
animal that abounded there before man 
invaded these shores. And now the eye 



can follow the course of the Rhine (from 
the roof of the palace) as far as Ingel- 
heim, Ehrenfels, the Mouse Tower, Jo- 
hannisberg and Riidesheim, and vine- 
yards climb up the rocks and fight their 
way into the sunshine ; and we begin to 
feel that these little 
shrines we some- 
times come across, 
and huts of vine- 
yard-keepers, and 
queerly-shaped 
baskets like some 
of the Scotch fish 
"creels," all force 
on our attention the 
fact that the grow- 
ing and making 
and selling of wine 
are the most cha- 
racteristic features 
of Rhine - life, at 
least outside the 
cities. Though the 
vineyards are not 
as picturesque as 
poets insist on 
making them, yet 
the vintage-season 
is full of picturesque 
incidents. This is 
a " movable festi- 
val," and occurs 
any time between 
the beginning of 
September and the 
middle of Novem- 
ber, What applies 
to one district does 
not to another, and 
there are a thou- 
sand minute dif- 
ferences occasion- 
ed by soil, weather 
and custom; so 
that none of the 
following observa- 
tions is to be taken as a generalization. 
At the outset it is worth notice that the 
German word Weinberg ("Wine-hill ") is 
much more correct than our equivalent, 
for even in the flatter countries where the 
grape is grown the most is made of ev- 
ery little rise in the ground. The writer 



34 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



of a recent magazine article has exploded 
the commonly-received idea that in the 
United States alone more Rhine wine is 
drunk than the whole Rhine wine-region 
really produces. The truth is, that it is 
a problem how to get rid of all that is 
made. The wine is drunk new bv everv 



I one in the neighborhood, and seils "at 
prices within the means of all ; and this 
because there are vineyards by the hun- 
dred whose exposure does not fit them 
for the production of the fine wines ea- 
gerly bought by foreign merchants, and 
also because manv of the small wine- 




luther's monument at worms. 



growers have no means of getting their 
wares to the right market. The great 
traffic is confined chiefly to wholesale 
growers, rich men who can tide over 
half a score of bad years and afford to 
sell the whole crop of those years for 
next to nothing ; and their wine it is 
which with us represents the whole Rhine 
vintage. It is, however, hardly more than 
a third, and the rest of the wine made on 
the Rhine is to the untutored taste just 
as good and just as pleasant. It is said 
by connoisseurs that all the difference 
between the wine of good and bad years 
is in its "bouquet," and the juice of the 
same grapes brings four dollars and a 
half a gallon at the vineyard Qx^t. year and 
can be bought in another year for twenty 
cents. The wine -trade has developed 
an odd profession, that of wine -taster, 
and these skillful critics command high 



v/ages and great consideration. But of 
course each locality has its own knot of 
oracles, and the ludicrous gravity with 
which these village " tasters " decide on 
the merits of mine host's purchases — or 
perhaps growths— is a subject not un- 
worthy the pencil of Ostade, Teniers or 
Hogarth. The parish priest is not the 
least learned among these local connois- 
seurs, and one or two official personages 
generally form, with him, the jury that 
decides on the worth of the year's crop. 
Professional buyers and commissioners 
from German and foreign firms crowd to 
the markets where the wine is sold, and 
after being open to inspection for a week 
the crop of each grower is generally sold 
in a lump to some one firm, probably an 
old customer, for a sum that sounds fab- 
ulous ; but then the bad years, when just 
as much expense is lavished on the vines 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



35 



and no returns bring the growers a re- 
ward, have to be considered as a counter- 
weight. Of course there is a monstrous 
deal of " doctoring," and even the purest 
of the wines are not as they came from 
Nature's hand ; but in the bad years it 
is notorious that fortunes are made out 
of wine sold for a few cents a gallon and 
exported at a profit of a hundred per 
cent. Thence, perhaps, comes the by- 
word about our drinking more wine than 
the vineyards produce. 

But, leaving the commercial aspect of 
the trade, let us take a glance at the pic- 
turesque side. Like the fisheries, this 
business, that looks commonplace in cel- 
lars and vaults, has its roots in free, open- 
air life, and is connected with quaint his- 
torical details and present customs hard- 
ly less novel to us. The aspect of the 
country in autumn, as described in a 
letter written last year, is lovely- — -"the 
exuberant quantity of fine fruit ; . . . 
the roads bordered by orchards of apples 
and pears, where the trees are so loaded 
that the branches have to be supported 
by stakes lest they should break ; . . . 
men, women and children busy in the 
vineyards on the sides of the hills ; the 
road alive with peasants laden with bask- 
ets of fruit or tubs in which the grapes 
were pressed. Some were pressing the 
grapes in great tubs or vats on the road- 
side. In the afternoon there were con- 
tinual firing of guns and shouting of the 
peasants on the vine-hills, making merry 
after their labor, for the vintage is the 
season when labor and jollity go hand in 
hand. We bought clusters of delicious 
grapes for almost nothing, and I drank 
of the newly-pressed wine, which has the 
sweetness of new cider. . . . Every now 
and then we passed wagons bearing great 
pipes of new wine, with bunches of flow- 
ers and streamers of ribbons stuck in the 
bung." The last cask of the vintage is 
always honored by a sort of procession — 
Bacchanalia, an artist might call it — the 
three or four youngest and prettiest girls 
mounted on it in a wagon, their heads 
crowned with grapes and leaves and a 
heap of fruit in their laps. The men 
lead the horses slowly home, stopping 
often to drink or offer to others the new 



wine, and brandishing aloft their clubs 
for beating the fruit with ; the children 
run alongside with armfuls of the fruit, 
and their faces stained all over with the 
juice, while in some nook, perhaps a stone 
arbor trellised with vines, sits the portly, 
jolly owner, with his long-jointed pipe, 
an incarnation of a German Bacchus, 
smiling at the pretty maidens, who pelt 
him with his own grapes. But before the 
season a very different scene takes place 
in the "locked " vineyards, closed by law 
even to their owners, and where at night 
no one but a lonely watchman, with gun 
loaded and wolfish dog at his heels, sits 
in a little straw-thatched, tent-shaped hut 
to ward off thieves and intruders. When 
the vineyards are declared open, the best 
policy is to get in the harvest at once, 
unless you are rich enough to have your 
crops carefully watched every hour for a 
week, when the grapes will certainly be 
better and the wine more precious. For 
it is a custom that after the opening, but 
as long as the vintage is not actually be- 
gun in any vineyard, the grapes are free 
to visitors. The guests of the owner are 
privileged to pluck and eat all through 
the vintage ; but again custom ordains 
that if you eat only half a plucked clus- 
ter, you should hang the remainder on 
the trellis, that it may not be trodden 
under foot and wasted. Donkeys and 
women carrying those odd, heavy bask- 
ets that decorate the cottages convey the 
grapes to the pressing-vats in endless and 
recrossing processio-ns, and not one grape 
that has been plucked is left on the ground 
till the morrow : all must be stowed away 
the same day before dusk. The vintage- 
days themselves are busy, and the hot 
and tired workers would wonder to see 
poets and painters weave their hard labor 
into pictures and sonnets. But the open- 
ing day, as well as the closing one, is a 
festival, often a religious one, and a pro- 
cession winds its way where laden ani- 
mals tread all the rest of the week. A 
sermon is generally preached, and after 
the ceremony is over the day becomes a 
kind of holiday and picnic affair. Groups 
of workers during the vintage sit on the 
hot slate terraces, shrinking close to the 
walls for the sake of a coolness that 



36- 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



hardly exists save 
underground in the 
wide, gloomy cata- 
combs that undermine 
the hillside ; and these 
caverns,, filled with 
great casks, are not 
. the least curious sight 
of the Rhine wine-re- 
gions. Above ground, 
you come on little 
shrines and stone 
crosses embowered in 
fruit, the frame of the 
sorry picture far more 
beautiful than the pic- 
ture itself, yet that daub 
means so much to the 
simple, devout peasant 
who kneels or rests un- 
der it ! The process of 
picking and pressing 
is simple and quick. 
The grapes are picked 
from the stalks and 

dropped into little tubs, 
then shaken out into 
baskets with a quick 

double movement, 

and pressed with 

"juice-clubs" on the 

spot, whereupon the 

load is quickly carried 

off (sometimes carted 

in large casks) to the 

great wine -presses m 

the building provided 

for this purpose. 

There is an overseer 

to each group of woi k- 

ers, who regulates the 

rate and quantity of 

fruit to be thrown at 

once into the first tubs, 

and who takes note of 

the whole day's har- 
vest, which is reckon- 
ed by the basketful 

When we come to the 

far - famed JohanniS- 

berg vineyards, whose 

origin lies back in the 

tenth century, when Abbot Rabanus cul- 
tivated these hillsides that are now partly 







MAYENCE KNITTING- WOMEN. 

I the property of some of the Metternich 
I family, we learn the value of these basket- 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



37 



fuls, each containing what goes to make a 
gallon ; which quantity will fill four bot- 
tles, at eight thalers the bottle among 
friends who take no percentage and give 
you the pure juice. After that, does any 
one suppose that he gets Johannisberg, 
Steinberg or Riidesheim, or Brauneberg 
and Bernkasteler Doctor, two of the best 
Moselle wines, when he pays two or three 
dollars a bottle for this so-called wine in 
a restaurant? Better call for what the 
restaurant- keeper would protest was not 
worth buying, but which the real con- 
noisseur would agree with the Rhine 
peasantry in drinking and enjoying — the 
new, undoctored wine that is kept in the 
wood and drawn as the needs of cus- 
tomers require. 

One of the prettiest vintage-sights is 
the feast of St. Roch, held yearly near 
Bingen in the Rheingau, on the grounds 
of the Villa Landy, now belonging to 
Herr Braun. St. Roch is here consider- 
ed the patron of the wine-industry, and 
the festival is held on the Sunday follow- 
ing the 1 6th of August, the day of the 
restoration of the old chapel. Against 
the exterior eastern wall is put up a tem- 
porary pulpit ; the hill is clothed with 
white tents gayly decked with leaves, 
grapes, flowers and ribbons ; refreshments 
are sold; all the bells of the neighbor- 
hood peal and jingle ; the country-folk 
in costume come up in merry groups or 
in devout processions with their parish 
clergy, school banners and crosses, sing- 
ing hymns or reciting the rosary, and 
after the sermon and prayers scattering 
through the vineyards and spending the 
day in what we will hope is no worse a 
manner than appears to the artist eye. 

There is one peculiarity about the 



Riidesheim vintage-season — its lateness. 
It begins about the 3d of November, 
sometimes a little earlier, but still later 
than most others. Two years ago it took 
place in this way, after a fortnight's steady 
fog and weather more like that of a wild 
northern sea-coast than of the "sunny " 
Rhine. But this gray, damp air was the 
very thing wanted, for it slowly rots the 
grapes and produces from this corruption 
the most delicious wine. It is said that 
this Riidesheim custom of a late vintage 
is due to a fortunate fit of forgetfulness 
of the abbot of Fulda, who once neglect- 
ed to give the necessary permission to 
open the Johannisberg vineyards, and 
did not remedy his mistake till early in 
November, when the despairing vine- 
dressers fancied the crop wholly spoilt ; 
but another version tells us that it once 
happened that the vintage was delayed 
through the circumstances of a war that 
laid waste most of the neighborhood and 
claimed the service of every able-bodied 
man, so that the vine-growers in disgust 
sold the crop for a mere nothing, and 
found out afterward what a prize they 
had let slip through their fingers. It is 
said to be for the sake of producing this 
rottenness in the grape before gathering 
it that in some Greek and Armenian 
vineyards the vines are sometimes pin- 
ned down to the hot earth and allowed 
to creep like ivy over the soil. So at 
Riidesheim the vintage went on in glee 
and high expectations, in contrast to the 
sullen sky and clinging mist, while the 
foggy nights were disturbed by blazing 
fires, continuous shots and hymns of 
joy and jollity sung by the home-going 
workers. 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



PART III. 




EVENING CONCERT AT WIESBADEN. 



WIESBADEN (the "Meadow- 
Bath"), though an inland town, 
partakes of some of the Rhine charac- 
teristics, though even if it did not, its 
notoriety as a spa would be enough to 
make some mention of it necessary. 
3S 



Its promenade and Kurhaus, its socie- 
ty, evening concerts, alleys of beautiful 
plane trees, its frequent illuminations 
with Bengal lights, reddening the clas- 
sic peristyles and fountains with which 
modern taste has decked the town, its 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



39 



airy Moorish pavilion over the springs, 
and its beautiful Greek, chapel with fire- 
gilt domes, each surmounted by a double 
cross connected with the dome by gilt 
chains — a chapel built by the duke Adolph 
of Nassau in memory of his wife, Eliza- 
beth Michaelovna, a Russian princess, — 
are things that almost every American 
traveler remembers, not to mention the 
Neroberger wine grown in the neigh- 
borhood. 

Schlangenbad, a less well - known 
bathing-place, is a favorite goal of Wies- 
baden excursionists, for a path through 
dense beech woods leads from the stir- 
ring town to the quieter "woman's re- 
public," where, before sovereigns in in- 
cognito came to patronize it, there had 
long been a monopoly of its charms by 
the wives and daughters of rich men, 
bankers, councilors, noblemen, etc., and 
also by a set of the higher clergy; The 
waters were famous for their sedative 
qualities, building up the nervous sys- 
tem, and, it is said, also beautifying the 
skin. Some credulous persons traced 
the name of the "Serpents' Bath" to 
the fact that snakes lurked in the springs 
and gave the waters their healing pow- 
ers ; but as the neighborhood abounds 
in a small harmless kind of reptile, this 
is the more obvious reason for the name. 
I spent a pleasant ten days at Schlang- 
enbad twelve or thirteen years ago, when 
many of the German sovereigns prefer- 
red it for its quiet to the larger and noi- 
sier resorts, and remember with special 
pleasure meeting with fields of Scotch 
heather encircled by beech and chestnut 
woods, with ferny, rocky nooks such as 
— when it is in Germany that you find 
them — suggest fairies, and with a curious 
village church, just restored by a rich 
English Catholic, since dead, who lived 
in Brussels and devoted his fortune to 
religious purposes all over the world. 
This church was chiefly interesting as a 
specimen of what country churches were 
in the Middle Ages, having been restored 
in the style common to those days. It 
was entirely of stone, within as well as 
without, and I remember no painting 
on the walls. The " tabernacle," instead 
of being placed on the altar, as is the 



custom in most churches now, and has 
been for two or three hundred ye^ars, was, 
according to the old German custom, a 
separate shrine, with a little tapering 
carved spire, placed in the corner of the 
choir, with a red lamp burning before it. 
Here, as in most of the Rhine neighbor- 
hoods, the people are mainly Catholics, 
but in places where summer guests of all 
nations and religions are gathered there 
is often a friendly arrangement by which 
the same building is used for the services 
of two or three faiths. There was, I think, 
one such at Schlangenbad, where Cath- 
olic, Lutheran and Anglican services were 
successively held every Sunday morning ; 
and in another place, where a large Cath- 
olic church has since been built, the old 
church was divided down the middle of 
the nave by a wooden partition about the 
height of a man's head, and Catholic and 
Protestant had each a side permanently 
assigned to them for their services. This 
kind of practical toleration, probably in 
the beginning the result of poverty on 
both sides, but at any rate creditable to 
its practicers, was hardly to be found 
anywhere outside of Germany. I re- 
member hearing of the sisters of one of 
the pope's German prelates, Monsignor 
Prince Hohenlohe, who were Lutherans, 
embroidering ecclesiastical vestments 
and altar-linen for their brother with as 
much delight as if he and they believed 
alike; and (though this is anything but 
praiseworthy, for it was prompted by 
policy and not by toleration) it was a 
custom of the smaller German princes to 
bring their daughters up in the vaguest 
belief in vital truths, in order that when 
they married they might become what- 
ever their husbands happened to be, 
whether Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic 
or Greek. The events of the last few 
years, however, have changed all this, 
and religious strife is as energetic in 
Germany as it was at one time in Italy : 
people must take sides, and this out- 
ward, easy-going old life has disappear- 
ed before the novel kind of persecution 
sanctioned by the Falk laws. Some per- 
sons even think the present state of things 
traceable to that same toleration, leading, 
as it did in many cases, to lukewarmness 



40 



DOWN THE RHINE. 




DOWN THE RHINE. 



41 



and indifferentism in religion. Strange 
phases for a fanatical Germany to pass 
through, and a stranger commentary on 
the words of Saint Remigius to Clovis, 
the first Frankish Christian king: "Burn 
that which thou hast worshiped, and wor- 
ship that which thou hast burnt" ! 

Schwalbach is another of Wiesbaden's 




LUTHER'S HOUSE AT FRANKFORT. 

handmaidens — a pleasant, rather quiet 
spotj from which, if you please, you can 
follow the Main to the abode of spark- 
ling hock or the vinehills of Hochheim, 
the property of the church which crowns 
the heights. This is at the entrance of 
the Roman-named Taunus Mountains, 
where there are bathing-places, ruined 
castles, ancient bridges, plenty of le- 



gends, and, above all, dark solemn old 
chestnut forests. But we have a long 
way to go, and must not linger on our 
road to the free imperial city of Frank- 
fort, with its past history and present im- 
portance. Here too I have some per- 
sonal remembrances, though hurried 
ones. The hotel itself— what a relief 
such hotels are from the mod- 
ern ones with electric bells and 
elevators and fifteen stories ! — ■ 
was an old patrician house am- 
ple, roomy, dignified, and each 
room had some individuality, 
notwithstanding the needful 
amount of transformation from 
its old self. It was a dull, wet 
day when we arrived, and next 
morning we went to the cathe- 
dral, Pepin's foundation, of 
which I remember, however, 
less than of the great hall in 
the Rbmer building where the 
Diets sat and where the "Gold- 
en Bull" is still kept — a hall 
now magnificently and appro- 
priately frescoed with subjects 
from German history. Then 
the far - famed Judengasse, a 
street where the first Roths- 
child's mother lived till within 
a score of years ago, and where 
now, among the dark, crazy 
tenements, so delightful to the 
artist's eye, there glitters one 
of the most gorgeously-adorn- 
ed synagogues in Europe. A 
change indeed from the times 
when Jews were hunted and 
hooted at in these proud, fa- 
natical cities, which were not 
above robbing them and mak- 
ing use of them even while they 
jeered and persecuted ! The 
great place in front of the em- 
peror's hall was the appointed ground for 
tournaments, and as we lounge on we 
come to a queer house, with its lowest 
corner cut away and the oriel window 
above supported on one massive pillar : 
from that window tradition says that 
Luther addressed the people just before 
starting for Worms to meet the Diet. 
This other house has a more modern 



42 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



look : it is Goethe's birthplace, the house 
where the noted housekeeper and accom- 
plished hostess, "Frau Ratk" — or "Mad- 
am Councilor," as she was called — gath- 
ered round her those stately parties that 
are special to the great free cities 
of olden trade. Frankfort has 
not lost her reputation in this 
line : her merchants and civic 
functionaries still form an aris- 
tocracy, callings as well as for- 
tunes are hereditary, and if some 
modern elements have crept in, 
they have not yet superseded the 
old. The regattas and boating- 
parties on the Main remind one 
of the stir on the banks of the 
Thames between Richmond 
and Twickenham, where so 
many "city men" have lovely 
retired homes ; but Frankfort 
has its Kew Gardens also, where 
tropical flora, tree-ferns and 
palms, in immense conserva- 
tories, make perpetual summer, 
while the Zoological Garden 
and the bands that play there 
are another point of attraction. 
Still, I think one more willingly 
seeks the older parts — the Ash- 
tree Gate, with its machicolated 
tower and turrets, the only rem- 
nants of the fortifications ; the 
old cemetery, where Goethe's 
mother is buried ; and the old 
bridge over the Main, with the 
statue of Charlemagne bearing 
the globe of empire in his hand, 
which an innocent countryman from the 
neighboring village of Sachsenhausen 
mistook for the man who invented the 
Aeppelwei, a favorite drink of Frank- 
fort. This bridge has another curios- 
ity — a gilt cock on an iron rod, com- 
memorating the usual legend of the 
" first living thing " sent across to cheat 
the devil, who had extorted such a prom- 
ise from the architect. But although the 
ancient remains are attractive, we must 
not forget the Bethmann Museum, with 
its treasure of Dannecker's Ariadne, and 
the Stadel Art Institute, both the legacies 
of public-spirited merchants to their native 
town ; the Bourse, where a business hard- 



ly second to any in London is done ; and 
the memory of so many great minds of 
modern times — Borne, Brentano, Bettina 
von Arnim, Feurbach, Savigny, Schloss- 
en, etc. The Roman remains at Ober- 




JOHN WOLFGANG GOETHE. 

iirzel in the neighborhood ought to have 
a chapter to themselves, forming as they 
do a miniature Pompeii, but the Rhine 
and its best scenery calls us away from 
its great tributary, and we already begin 
to feel the witchery which a popular poet 
has expressed in these lines, supposed to 
be a warning from a father to a wander- 
ing son : 

To the Rhine, to the Rhine ! go not to the Rhine ! 

INIy son, I counsel thee well; 
For there life is too sweet and too fine, and every 

breath is a spell. 

The nixie calls to thee out of the flood ; and if thou 

her smiles shouldst see, 
And the Lorelei, with her pale cold lips, then 'tis all 

over with thee: 



DOIVN THE RHINE. 



43 



For bewitched and delighted, yet seized with fear, 
Thy home is forgotten and mourners weep here. 

This is the Rheingau, the most beau- 
tiful valley of rocks and bed of rapids 
which occurs during the whole course of 
the river — the region most crowded with 
legends and castles, and most frequented 
by strangers by railroad and steamboat. 



The right bank is at first the only one 
that calls for attention, dotted as it is 
with townlets, each nestled in orchards, 
gardens and vineyards, with a churcl* 
and steeple, and terraces of odd, over- 
hanging houses ; little stone arbors trel- 
lised with grapevines ; great crosses and 
statues of patron saints in the warm, soft- 




goethe's birthplace. 



toned red sandstone of the country ; fish- 
ermen's taverns, with most of the busi- 
ness done outside under the trees or vine- 
covered piazza ; little, busy wharfs and 
works, aping joyfully the bustle of large 
seaports, and succeeding in miniature ; 
and perhaps a burgomaster's garden, 
where that portly and pleasant function- 
ary does not disdain to keep a tavern 



and serve his customers himself, as at 
Walluf 

At Rauenthal (a "valley" placed on 
high hills) we find the last new claim- 
ant to the supremacy among Rhine 
wines, at least since the Paris Exhibi- 
tion, when the medal of honor was 
awarded to Rauenthal, which has ended 
in bringing many hundreds of curious 



44 



DOWN THE RHINE. 




JUDENGASSE AT FRANKFORT. 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



45 



connoisseurs to test the merits of the 
grape where it grows. Now comes a 
whole host of villages on either side of 
the river, famous through their wines — 
Steinberg, the "golden beaker;" Scharf- 
enstein, whose namesake castle was the 
refuge of the warlike archbishops of May- 
ence, the stumbling-block of the arch- 
bishops of Treves, called "the Lion of 
Luxembourg," and lastly the prey of the 
terrible Swedes, who in German stories 
play the part of Cossacks and Bashi- 
Bazouks ; Marcobrunnen, with its clas- 
sical-looking ruin of a fountain hidden 
among vineyards ; Hattenheim, Hall- 
garten, Grafenberg; and Eberbach, for- 
merly an abbey, known for its " cabinet " 
wine, the hall-mark of those times, and 
its legends of Saint Bernard, for whom 
a boar ploughed a circle with his tusks 
to show the spot where the saint should 
build a monastery, and afterward tossed 
great stones thither for the foundation, 
while angels helped to build the upper 
walls. Eberbach is rather deserted than 
ruined. It was a good deal shattered 
in the Peasants' War at the time of the 
Reformation, when the insurgents emp- 
tied the huge cask in which the whole of 
the Steinberg wine-harvest was stored; 
but since 1803, when it was made over 
to the neighboring wine-growers, it has 
remained pretty well unharmed ; and its 
twelfth - century chapel, full of monu- 
ments ; its refectory, now the press-house, 
with its columns and capitals nearly per- 
fect ; its cellars, where every year more 
wine is given away than is stored — z. e., 
all that which is not "cabinet-worthy" — 
as in the tulip-mania, when thousands 
of roots were thrown away as worthless, 
which yet had all the natural merit of 
lovely coloring and form, — make Eber- 
bach well worth seeing. 

Next comes Johannisberg, with its vine- 
yards dating back to the tenth century, 
when Abbot Rabanus of Fulda cultivated 
the grape and Archbishop Ruthard of 
Mayence built a monastery, dedicated to 
Saint John the Baptist, which for centu- 
ries was owner and guardian of the most 
noted Rhine vintage ; but abuses within 
and wars without have made an end of 
this state of things, and Albert of Bran- 



denburg's raid on the monks'^ cellars has 
been more steadily supplemented by the 
pressure of milder but no less efficient 
means of destruction. When Napoleon 
saw this tract of land and offered it to 
General Kellermann, who had admired 
its beauty, he is said to have received a 
worthy and a bold answer. " I thank 
Your Majesty," said the marshal, "but 
the receiver is as bad as the thief." The 
less scrupulous Metternich became its 
owner, giving for it, however, an equiva- 
lent of arable and wood land. The Met- 
ternich who for years was Austrian am- 
bassador at Paris during the brilliant 
time of the Second Empire, and whose 
fast and eccentric wife daily astonished 
society, is now owner of the peerless Jo- 
hannisberg vineyards, among which is 
his country-house. Go,ethe's friends, the 
Lade and Brentano families, lived in this 
neighborhood, and the historian Nicholas 
Vogt lies buried in the Metternich chap- 
el, though his heart, by his special de- 
sire, is laid in a silver casket within the 
rocks of Bingen, with a little iron cross 
marking the spot. At Geisenheim we 
are near two convents which as early 
as 1468 had printing-presses in active 
use, and the mysterious square tower 
of Riidesheim, which brings all sorts 
of suppositions to our mind, though the 
beauty of the wayside crosses, the tall 
gabled roofs, the crumbling walls, the 
fantastically-shaped rocks, getting high- 
er and higher on each side, and the per- 
petual winding of the river, are enough 
to keep the eye fixed on the mere land- 
scape. At the windows, balconies and 
arbors sit pretty, ruddy girls waving their 
handkerchiefs to the unknown " men and 
brethren" on board the steamers and 
the trains ; and well they may, if this 
be a good omen, for here is the "Iron 
Gate " of the Rhine, and the water bub- 
bles and froths in miniature whirlpools 
as we near what is called the " Bingen 
Hole." 

As we have passed the mouth of the 
Stein and recollected the rhyme of 
Schrodter in his Ki7ig Wines Triumph — 

Wreathed in vines and crowned with reeds comes the 

Rhine, 
And at his side with merry dance comes the Main, 



DOWN THE RHINE 




DOWN THE RHINE. 



47 



While the tnird with his steady steps is all of stone 

(Stein), 
And both Main and Stein are prime ministers to the 

Lord Rhine — 

SO now we peer up one of the clefts in 
the rocks and see the Nahe ploughing 
its way along to meet the great river. 
Just commanding the mouth is Klopp 
Castle, and not far warlike Bingen, a 
rich burgher-city, plundered and half 
destroyed in every war from those of 
the fourteenth to those of the eighteenth 
century, while Klopp too claims to have 
been battered and bruised even in the 
thirteenth century, but is better known 
as the scene of the emperor Henry IV.'s 
betrayal to the Church authorities by 
his son, who treacherously invited him to 
visit him here by night. A little way up 
the river Nahe, where the character of 
the people changes from the lighthearted- 
ness of the Rhine proper to a steadiness 
and earnestness somewhat in keeping with 
the sterner and more mountainous aspect 
of the country, is Kreuznach, (or "Cross- 
near"), now a bathing-resort, and once a 
village founded by the first Christian mis- 
sionaries round the first cross under whose 
shadow they preached the gospel. Spon- 
heim Castle, once the abode of Trithe- 
mius, or Abbot John of Trittenheim, a 
famous chronicler and scholar, reminds 
us of the brave butcher of Kreuznach, 
Michael Mort, whose faithfulness to his 
lawful lord when beset by pretenders to 
his title in his own family won for the 
guild of butchers certain privileges which 
they have retained ever since ; and Rhein- 
grafenstein, where the ruins are hardly 
distinguishable from the tossed masses 
of porphyry rock on which they are 
perched, tells us the story of Boos von 
Waldeck's wager with the lord of the 
castle to drink a courier's top-boot full 
of Rhine wine at one draught — a feat 
which he is said to have successfully ac- 
complished, making himself surely a fit 
companion for Odin in Walhalla ; but his 
reward on earth was more substantial, 
for he won thereby the village of Hiiffels- 
heim and all its belongings. In a less 
romantic situation stands Ebernburg, so 
called from the boar which during a siege 
the hungry but indomitable defenders of 



the castle paraded again and again be- 
fore the eyes of the besiegers, whose 
only hope lay in starving out the garrison 
— the property of the Sickengens, whose 
ancestor Franz played a prominent part 
in the Reformation and gave an asylum 
in these very halls to Bucer, Melanchthon, 
CEcolampadius and Ulrich von Hiitten. 
Past Rothenfels, where towering rocks 
hem in the stream, like the Wye banks 
in Arthur's country on the Welsh bor- 
ders ; the scattered stones of Disiboden- 
berg, the Irish missionary's namesake 
convent, which afterward passed into the 
hands of the Cistercians ; Dhaum Castle 
and Oberstein Church, these two with 
their legends, the first accounting for a 
bas-relief in the great hall representing 
an ape rocking a child, the heir of the 
house, in the depths of a forest, and giv- 
ing him an apple to eat, — we come to a 
cluster of castles which are the classical 
ground of the Nahe Valley. The very 
rocks seem not only crowned but honey- 
combed with buildings : chapels stand 
on jutting crags ; houses, heaped as it 
were one on the roof of the other, climb 
up their rough sides, and the roofs them- 
selves have taken their cue from the 
rocks, and have three or four irregular 
lines of tiny windows ridging and bulg- 
ing them out. 

Taking boat again at Bingen, and 
getting safely through the Rhine " Hell 
Gate," the "Hole," whose terrors seem 
as poetic as those of the Lorelei, we pass 
the famous Mouse Tower, and opposite 
it the ruined Ehrenfels ; Assmanshausen, 
with its dark-colored wine and its custom 
of a May or Pentecost feast, when thou- 
sands of merry Rhinelanders spend the 
day in the woods, dancing, drinking and 
singing, baskets outspread in modified 
and dainty pic-nic fashion, torches lit 
at night and bands playing or mighty 
choruses resounding through the woods ; 
St. Clement's Chapel, just curtained from 
the river by a grove of old poplars and 
overshadowed by a ruin with a hom- 
dred eyes (or windows), while among 
the thickly-planted, crooked crosses of 
its churchyard old peasant-women and 
children run or totter, the first telling 
their beads, the second gathering flowers, 



48 



DOWN THE RHINE. 




BINGEN, FROM KLOPP CASTLE. 



and none perhaps remembering that the 
chapel was built by the survivors of the 
families of the robber-knights of Rhein- 
stein (one of the loveliest of Rhine ruins) 



and three other confederated castles, 
whom Rudolph of Habsburg treated, 
rightly enough, according to the Lynch 
law of his time. They were hung wher- 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



49 



ever found, but their pious relations did 
not forget to bury them and atone for 
them as seemingly as might be. 

Bacharach, if it were not famed in 
Germany for its vvine, according to the 
old rhyme declaring that 

At Wiirzburg on the Stein, 
At Hochheim on the Main, 
At Bacharach on the Rhine. 
There grows the best of wine, 

would or ought to be noticed for its 
wealth of old houses and its many ar- 
chitectural beauties, from the ruined (or 
rather unfinished) chapel of St. Werner, 
now a wine-press house, bowered in trees 
and surrounded by a later growth of 
crosses and tombstones, to the meanest 
little house crowding its neighbor that 
it may bathe its doorstep in the river — 
houses that when their owners built and 
patched them from generation to gene- 
ration little dreamt that they would stand 
and draw the artist's eye when the castle 
was in ruins. Similarly, the many seri- 
ous Mstorical incidents that took place 
in Bacharach have lived less long in the 
memory of inhabitants and visitors than 
the love-story connected with the ruined 
castle — that of Agnes, the daughter of the 
count of this place and niece of the great 
Barbarossa, whom her father shut up here 
with her mother to be out of the way of 
her lover, Henry of Braunschweig. The 
latter, a Guelph (while the count was a 
Ghibelline), managed, however, to de- 
feat the father's plans : the mother help- 
ed the lovers, and a priest was smuggled 
into the castle to perform the marriage, 
which the father, after a useless outburst 
of rage, wisely acknowledged as valid. 
The coloring of many buildings in this 
part of the Rhineland is very beautiful, 
the red sandstone of the neighborhood 
being one of the most picturesque of 
building materials. Statues and crosses, 
as well as churches and castles, are built 
of it, and even the rocks have so appeal- 
ed by their formation to the imagination 
of the people that at Schbnburg we meet 
with a legend of seven sisters, daugh- 
ters of that family whose hero, Marshal 
Schomburg, the friend and right hand 
of William of Orange, lies buried in 
Westminster Abbey, honored as mar- 



shal of France, peer of Great Britain 
and grandee of Portugal, and who, for 
their haughtiness toward their lovers, 
were turned into seven rocks, through 
part of which now runs the irreverent 
steam-engine, ploughing through the tun- 
nel that cuts off a corner where the river 
bends again. 

Now comes the gray rock where, as 
all the world knows, the Lorelei lives, 
but as that graceful myth is familiar 
to all, we will hurry past the mermaid's 
home, where so much salmon used to be 
caught that the very servants of the neigh- 
boring monastery of St. Goar were for- 
bidden to eat salmon more than three 
times a week, to go and take a glimpse 
of St. Goarshausen, with its convent 
founded in the seventh century by one 
of the first Celtic missionaries, and its 
legend of the spider who remedied the 
carelessness of the brother cellarer when 
he left the bung out of Charlemagne's 
great wine - cask by quickly spinning 
across the opening a web thick enough 
to stop the flow of wine. A curious relic 
of olden time and humor is shown in the 
cellar — an iron collar, grim-looking, but 
more innocent than its looks, for it was 
used only to pin the unwary visitor to the 
wall while a choice between a " baptism" 
of water and wine was given him. The 
custom dates back to Charlemagne's time. 
Those who, thinking to choose the least 
evil of the two, gave their voice for the 
water, had an ample and unexpected 
shower - bath, while the wine - drinkers 
were crowned with some tinseled wreath 
and given a large tankard to empty. On 
the heights above the convent stood the 
"Cat" watching the "Mouse" on the 
opposite bank above Wellmich, the two 
names commemorating an insolent mes- 
sage sent by Count John III. of the cas- 
tle of Neu-Katzellenbogen to Archbish- 
op Kuno of Falkenstein, the builder of 
the castle' of Thurnberg, " that he greet- 
ed him and hoped he would take good 
care of his mouse, that his (John's) 
cat might not eat it up." And now we 
pass a chain of castles, ruins and vil- 
lages ; rocks with such names as the 
Prince's Head; lead, copper and silver 
works, with all the activity of modern 



5° 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



life, stuck on like a puppet-show to the 
background of a solemn old picture, a 
rocky, solitary island, "The Two Broth- 
ers," the twin castles of Liebenstein and 
Sternberg, the same which Bulwer has 



immortalized in his Pilgrmis of the 
Rhine, and at their feet, close to the 
shore, a modern-looking building, the 
former Redemptorist convent of Born- 
hofen. As we step out there is a rude 




RHEINGRAFENSTEIN. 



quay, four large old trees and a wall with 
a pinnacled niche, and then we meet a 
boatful of pilgrims with their banners, for 
this is one of the shrines that are still fre- 
quented, notwithstanding many difficul- 



ties — notwithstanding that the priests 
were driven out of the convent some 
time ago, and that the place is in lay 
hands ; not, however, unfriendly hands, 
for a Catholic German nobleman, mar- 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



51 



ried to a Scotch woman, bought the 
house and church, and endeavored, as 
under the shield of "private property," 
to preserve it for the use of the CathoUc 
population of the neighborhood. Last 
summer an English Catholic family rent- 
ed the house, and a comfortable home 
was established in the large, bare build- 
ing attached to the church, where is still 
kept the Gnadenbild, or "Grace image," 
which is the object of the pilgrimage — a 
figure of the Blessed Virgin holding her 
dead Son upon her knees. These Eng- 
lish tenants brought a private chaplain 
with them, but, despite their privileges 
as English subjects, I believe there was 
some trouble with the government au- 
thorities. H owever, they had mass said 
for them at first in the church on week- 
days. A priest from Camp, the neigh- 
boring post-town, was allowed to come 
once in a week to say mass for the peo- 
ple, but with locked doors, and on other 
days the service was also held in the 
same way, though a few of the country- 
people always managed to get in quietly 
before the doors were shut. On Sun- 
days mass was said for the strangers and 
their household only in a little oratory 
up in the attics, which had a window 
looking into the church near the roof 
of the chancel. One of them describes 
" our drawing-room in the corner of the 
top floor, overlooking the river," and 
"our life . . . studying German, reading 
and writing in the morning, dining early, 
walking out in the evening, tea-supper 
when we come home. . . . There are 
such pretty walks in the ravines and 
hills, in woods and vineyards, and to the 
castles above and higher hills beyond! 
We brought one man and a maid, who 
do not know German, and found two Ger- 
man servants in the house, who do every- 
thing. ... It is curious how cheaply we 
live here ; the German cook left here does 
everything for us, and we are saying she 
makes us much better soups an d omelettes 
and souffles than any London cook." 
Now, as these three things happen to be 
special tests of a cook's skill, this praise 
from an Englishman should somewhat 
rebuke travelers who can find no word 
too vile for "German cookery." 



The time of the yearly pilgrimage 
came round during the stay of these 
strangers, "and pilgrims came from Co- 
blenz, a four hours' walk (in mid-August 
and the temperature constantly in the 
nineties), on the opposite side of the 
river, singing and chanting as they came, 
and crossed the river here in boats. High 
mass was at half-past nine (in the morn- 
ing) and benediction at half-past one, 
immediately after which they returned 
in boats down the stream much more 
quickly. The day before was a more 
local pilgrimage : mass and benediction 
were at eight, but pilgrims came about 
all the morning." Later on, when the 
great heat had brought "premature au- 
tumn tints to the trees and burnt up the 
grass," the English family made some 
excursions in the neighborhood, and in 
one place they came to a " forest and a 
large tract of tall trees," but this was 
exceptional, as the soil is not deep enough 
to grow large timber, and the woods are 
chiefly low underwood. The grapes were 
srnall, and on the 22d of August the/ 
tasted the first plateful at Stolzenfels, an 
old castle restored by the queen-dowager 
of Prussia, and now the property of the 
empress of Germany. "The view from 
it is lovely up and down the river, and 
the situation splendid — about four hun- 
dred feet above the river, with high 
wooded hills behind, just opposite the 
Lahn where it falls into the Rhine." 
Wolfgang Miiller describes Stolzenfels 
as a beautiful specimen of the old Ger- 
man style, with a broad smooth road 
leading up over drawbridges and moats, 
with mullioned windows and machico- 
lated towers, and an artistic open stair- 
case intersected by three pointed arches, 
and looking into an inner courtyard, with 
a fountain surrounded by broad-leaved 
tropical water-plants. The sight of a 
combination of antique dignity with cor- 
rect modern taste is a delight so seldom 
experienced that it is worth while dwell- 
ing on this pleasant fact as brought out 
in the restoration of Stolzenfels, the 
"Proud Rock." And that the Rhine- 
landers are proud of their river is no 
wonder when strangers can talk about it 
thus : " The Rhine is a river which grows 



■^2 



DOWN THE RHINE. 




MOUSE-TOWER (OR BISHOP HATTO'S TOWER) AND EHRENFELS. 

upon you, living in a pretty part of its its beauties, perhaps exaggerated, unfold 
course : ... its less beauteous parts have greatly the more you explore them, not 
their own attractions to the natives, and to be seen by a rushing tourist up and 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



53 



down the stream by rail or by boat, but 
sought out and contemplated from its 
heights and windings ... In fact, the 
pretty part of its course is from Bingen 
to Bonn. Here we are in a wonderfully 



winding gorge, containing nearly all its 
picturesque old castles, uninterrupted by 
any flat. The stream is i-apid enough, 
four miles an hour or more — not equal 
to the Rhone at Geneva, but like that 




THE LORELEI ROCK. 



river in France. One does not wonder 
at the Germans being enthusiastic over 
their river, as the Romans were over the 
yellow Tiber." 

Other excursions were made by the 
Bornhofen visitors, one up a hill on the 



opposite side, oveir sixteen hundred feet 
high, whence a fine distant view of the 
Mosel Valley was seen, and one also to 
the church of St. ApoUinaris, at Rema- 
gen, at some distance down the river, 
where are "some fine frescoes by Ger- 



54 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



man artists covering the whole inte- 
rior of the church. One artist painted 
four or five large ones of the Crucifixion, 
Resurrection and other 
events relating to the 
life of Our Lord ; a 
second several of the / 

life of St. ApoUinaris, ,, ' 

and two others some 
of Our Lady and va- 
rious saints, one set 
being patron saints of 
the founder's children, 
whom I think we saw 
at Baden — Carl Egon, 
Count Fiirstenberg- 
Stammheim. , . . The 
family -house stands 
close to the church, or 
one of his houses, and 
seems to have been 
made into a Francis- 
can convent: the 
monks are now ban- 
ished and the churcli 
deserted, a custodc 
(guardian) in chargi . 
We went one day to 
Limburg to see thi 
bishop of this diocese 
a dear old man wh') 
only speaks German 

so E and C 

carried on all the con 
versation. The cath( - 
dral is a fine old Noi - 
man building with sei - 
en towers : it is undei - 
going restoration, and 
the remains of old fres- 
coes under the white- 
wash are the ground- 
work of renewed ones. 
Where an old bit is per- 
fect enough it is left." 

Camp, a mile from 
Bornhofen, is an insig- 
nificant place enough, 
but claiming to have 
been a Roman camp, 
and having an old 
convent as picturesque as those of far- 
famed and much -visited towns. The 
same irregular windows, roofed turrets 



springing up by the side of tall gables, 
a corner -shrine of Our Lady and Child, 
with vines and ivy making a niche for it. 




A STREET IN LIMBURG. 



mossy steps, a broken wall with trailing 
vines and steep stone-roofed recess, prob- 
ably an old niche, — such is a sketch of 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



55 



what would make a thoroughly good pic- 
ture ; but in this land there are so many 
such that one grows too familiar with 
them to care for the sight. Nearly op- 
posite is Boppard, a busy ancient town, 
with a parish church beautiful enough 
for a cathedral — St. Severin's church, 
with carved choir-stalls and a double 
nave — and the old Benedictine monas- 
tery for women, now a cold-water cure 
establishment. Boppard has its legend 
of a shadowy Templar and a faithless 
bridegroom challenged by the former, 
who turned out to be the forsaken bride 
herself; but of these legends, one so like 
the other, this part of the Rhine is full. 
The next winding of the stream shows us 
Oberspay, with a romantic tavern, carved 
pillars supporting a windowed porch, and 
a sprawling kind of roof; the "King's 
Stool," a modern restoration of the me- 
diaeval pulpit or platform of stone sup- 
ported by pillars, with eighteen steps and 
a circumference of forty ells, where the 
Rhenish prince-archbishops met to choose 
the temporal sovereigns who were in part 
their vassals ; Oberlahnstein, a town fa- 
mous for its possession in perfect repair 
of the ancient fortifications ; Lahneck, 
now a private residence, once the prop- 
erty of the Templars ; Stolzenfels, of 
which we have anticipated a glimpse ; 
the island of Oberwoith, with an old con- 
vent of St. Magdalen, and in the distance 
frowning Ehrenbreitstein, the fortress of 
Coblenz. 

Turning up the course of the Lahn, 
we get to the neighborhood of a small 
but famous bathing - place. Ems, the 
cradle of the Franco - Prussian war, 
where the house in which Emperor Wil- 
liam lodged is now shown as an historic 
memento, and effaces the interest due to 
the old gambling Kursaal. The English 
chapel, a beautiful small stone building 
already ivied ; the old synagogue, a plain 
whitewashed building, where the service 
is conducted in an orthodox but not very 
attractive manner; the pretty fern- and 
heather - covered woods, through which 
you ride on donkeyback; the gardens, 
where a Parisian-dressed crowd airs it- 
self late in the afternoon ; all the well- 
known adjuncts of a spa, and the most 



delightful baths I ever saw, "where in 
clean little chambers you step down 
three steps into an ample marble basin 
sunk in the floor, and may almost fancy 
yourself a luxurious Roman of the days 
of Diocletian, — such is Ems. But its en- 
virons are full of wider interest. There 
is Castle Schaumburg, where for twenty 
years the archduke Stephen of Austria, 
palatine of Hungary, led a useful and 
retired life, making his house as orderly 
and seemly as an English manor-house, 
and more interesting to the strangers, 
whose visits he encouraged, by the col- 
lections of minerals, plants, shells and 
stuffed animals and the miniature zoolog- 
ical and botanical gardens which he kept 
up and often added to. I spent a day 
there thirteen years ago, ten years before 
he died, lamented by his poor neighbors, 
to whom he was a visible providence. 
Another house of great interest is the old 
Stein mansion in the little town of Nas- 
sau, the home of the upright and patri- 
otic minister of that name, whose mem- 
ory is a household word in Germany. 
The present house is a comfortable mod- 
ern one — a chateau in the French sense 
of the word — but the old shattered tower 
above the town is the cradle of the family. 
At the village of Friicht is the family-vault 
and the great man's monument, a mod- 
ern Gothic canopy, somewhat bald and 
characterless, but bearing a fine statue 
of Stein by Schwanthaler, and an inscrip- 
tion in praise of the "unbending son of 
bowed-down Fatherland." He came of 
a good stock, for thus runs his father's fu- 
neral inscription, in five alliterative Ger- 
man rhymes. I can give it but lamely : 

His nay was nay, and steady. 
His yea was yea, and ready : 
Of his promise ever mindful. 
His lips his conscience ne'er belied. 
And his word was bond and seal. 

Stein was born in the house where he 
retired to spend his last years in study : 
his grave and pious nature is shown in 
the mottoes with which he adorned his 
home : " A tower of strength is our God " 
over the house-door, and in his library, 
above his books and busts and gathering 
of life-memorials, " Confidence in God, 
singleness of mind and righteousness." 



56 



DOWN THE RHINE 



riis contemporaries called him, in a play 
upon his name which, as such things go, 
was not bad, "The foundation-i-/(7«(? of 
right, the stumbling-^/^?;?^ of the wicked, 
and the precious stone of Germany." 
Arnstein and its old convent, now occu- 
pied by a solitary priest : Balduinenstein 
and its rough -hewn, cyclo- 
pean-looking ruin, standing 
over the mossy picturesque 
water-mill; the marble- 
quarries near Schaumburg, 
worked by convicts ; Diez 

and its conglomeration of 

I 

houses like a puzzle endow- * 

ed with life, — are all on the \ 

way to Limburg, the episco- \ - 

pal town, old and tortuous, 
sleepy and alluring, with its 
shady streets, its cathedral 
of St. George and its mon- 
ument of the lion-hearted 
Conrad or Kuno, surnamed 
Shortbold (Kurzbold), a 
nephew of Emperor Conrad, 
a genuine woman-hater, a 
man of giant strength but 
dwarfish height, who is said 
to have once strangled a lion, 
and at another time sunk a 
boatful of men with one blow 
of his spear. The cathe- 
dral, the same visited by our 
Bornhofen friends, has other 
treasures — carved stalls and 
a m^agnificent image of Our 
Lord of the sixteenth centu- 
ry, a Gothic baptismal font and a richly- 
sculptured tabernacle, as well as a much 
older image of St. George and the Dragon, 
supposed by some to refer to the legend- 
ary existence of monsters in the days 
when Limburg was heathen. Some such 
idea seems also not to have been remote 



from the fancy of the mediaeval sculptor 
who adorned the brave Conrad's monu- 
ment with such elaborately monstrous 
figures : it was evidently no lack of skill 
and delicacy that dictated such a choice 
of supporters, for the figure of the hero 
is lifehke, dignified and faithful to the 



//' 




t 



1 







CONRAD'S MONUMENT, LIMBURG CATHEDRAL. 



minute description of his features and 
stature left us by his chronicler, while 
the beauty of the leaf-border of the slab 
and of the capitals of the short pillars is 
such as to excite the envy of our best 
modern carvers. 



s 




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DOWN THE RHINE. 



CONCLUDING PART. 




CASTLE OF ELTZ. 



COBLENZ is the place which many 
years ago gave me my first associ- 
ations with the Rhine. From a neigh- 



boring town we often drove to Coblenz, 
and the wide, calm flow of the river, the 
low, massive bridge of boats and the com- 

57 



58 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



monplace outskirts of a busy city contrib- 
uted to make up a very different picture 
from that of the poetic "castled" Rhine 
of German song and English ballad. 
The old town has, however, many beau- 
ties, though its military character looks 
out through most of them, and reminds 
us that the Mosel city (for it originally 
stood only on that river, and then crept 
up to the Rhine), though a point of union 
in Nature, has been for ages, so far as 
mankind was concerned, a point of de- 
fence and watching. The great fortress, 
a German Gibraltar, hangs over the river 
and sets its teeth in the face of the op- 
posite shore : all the foreign element in 
the town is due to the deposits made 
there by troubles in other countries, rev- 
olution and war sending their exiles, 
emigres and prisoners. The history of 
the town is only a long military record, 
from the days of the archbishops of 
Treves, to whom it was subject, to those 
of the last war. It has, however, some 
pleasanter points : it has long been a fa- 
vorite summer residence of the empress 
of Germany, who not long before I was 
there had by her tact and toleration re- 
conciled sundry religious differences that 
threatened a political storm. Such tole- 
ration has gone out of fashion now, and 
the peacemaking queen would have a 
harder task to perform now that the two 
parties have come to an open collision. 
There- is the old "German house" by 
the bank of the Mosel, a building little 
altered outwardly since the fourteenth 
century, now used as a food-magazine 
for the troops. The church of St. Castor 
commemorates a holy hermit who lived 
and preached to the heathen in the 
eighth century, and also covers the grave 
and monument of the founder of the 
"Mouse" at Wellmich, the warlike Ku- 
no of Falkenstein, archbishop of Treves. 
The Exchange, once a court of justice, 
has changed less startlingly, and its pro- 
portions are much the same as of old ; 
and besides these there are other build- 
ings worth noticing, though not so old, 
and rather distinguished by the men who 
lived and died there, or were born there, 
such as Metternich, than by architectural 
beauties. Such houses there are in ev- 



ery old city. They do not invite you to 
go in and admire them : every tourist 
you meet does not ask you how you 
liked them or whether you saw them. 
They are homes, and sealed to you as 
such, but they are the shell of the real 
life of the countiy ; and they have some- 
how a charm and a fascination that no 
public building or show - place can have. 
Goethe, who turned his life-experiences 
into poetry, has told us something of one 
such house not far from Coblenz, in the 
village of Ehi'enbreitstein, beneath the 
fortress, and which in familiar Coblenz 
parlance goes by the name of "The Val- 
ley" — the house of Sophie de Laroche. 
The village is also Clement Brentano's 
birthplace. 

The oldest of German cities, Treves 
(or in German Trier), is not too far to 
visit on our way up the Mosel Valley, 
whose Celtic inhabitants of old gave the 
Roman legions so much trouble. But 
Rome ended by conquering, by means 
of her civilization as well as by her arms, 
and Augusta Trevirorum, though claim- 
ing a far higher antiquity than Rome 
herself, and still bearing an inscription 
to that effect on the old council-house — 
now called the Red House and used as 
a hotel — became, as Ausonius conde- 
scendingly remarked, a second Rome, 
adorned with baths, gardens, temples, 
theatres and all that went to make up 
an imperial capital. As in Venice every- 
thing precious seems to have come from 
Constantinople, so in Trier most things 
worthy of note date from the days of the 
Romans ; though, to tell the truth, few of 
the actual buildings do, no matter how 
classic is their look. The style of the 
Empire outlived its sway, and doubtless 
symbolized to the inhabitants their tra- 
ditions of a higher standard of civiliza- 
tion. The Porta Nigra, for instance — 
called Simeon's Gate at present — dates 
really from the days of the first Mero- 
vingian kings, but it looks like a piece of 
the Coliseum, with its rows of arches in 
massive red sandstone, the stones held 
together by iron clamps, and its low, im- 
mensely strong double gateway, remind- 
ing one of the triumphal arches in the 
Forum at Rome. The history of the 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



59 



transformations of this gateway is curi- 
ous. First a fortified city gate, stand- 
ing in a correspondingly fortified wall, 
it became a dilapidated granary 
and storehouse in the Middle 
Ages, when one of the arch- 
bishops gave leave to Simeon, a 
wandering hermit from Syracuse 
in Sicily, to take up his abode 
there ; and another turned it into 
a church dedicated to this saint, 
though of this change few traces 
remain. Finally, it has become 
a national museum of antiquities. 
The amphitheatre is a genuine 
Roman work, wonderfully well 
preserved ; and genuine enough 
were the Roman games it has wit- 
nessed, for, if we are to believe 
tradition, a thousand Frankish 
prisoners of war were here given 
in one day to the wild beasts by 
the emperor Constantine. Chris- 
tian emperors beautified the basil- 
ica that stood where the cathedral 
now is, and the latter itself has 
some basilica-like points about it, 
though, being the work of fifteen 
centuries, it bears the stamp of 
successive styles upon its face. 
To the neighborhood, and also to 
strangers, one of its great attrac- 
tions lies in its treasury of relics, 
the gift of Constantine's mother, 
Saint Helena, for many hundred 
years objects of pilgrimage, and 
even to the incredulous objects of 
curiosity and interest, for the robe 
of a yellowish-brown — supposed 
to have been once purple — which 
is shown as Our Lord's seamless 
garment, has been pronounced by 
learned men to be of very high 
antiquity. But what possesses the 
Rhine tourist to moralize ? He is 
a restless creature in general, more 
occupied in staring than in seeing 
— a gregarious creature too, who 
enjoys the evening table d'hote, 
the day-old Times and the Brit- 
ish or American gossip as a re- 
ward for his having conscientiously done 
whatever Murray or Baedeker bade him. 
Cook has only transformed the tourist's 



mental docility into a bodily one: the 
guidebook had long drilled his mind 
before the tour - contractor thought of 




:t i 'l C'v' •r~^-i ''^fl '>■'.' 



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t-^ 



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J' 



RUINS OF THE CAbTLE OF AUERBACH. 

drilling his body and driving willing 

gangs of his species all over the world. 

There is a funny, not over-reverent, 



6o 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



legend afloat in Trier to account for the 
queer dwarf bottles of Mosel wine used 
there : it refers to a trick of Saint Peter, 
who is supposed to have been travelhng 
in these parts with the Saviour, and when 
sent to bring wine to the latter drank 
half of it on his way back, and then, to 
conceal his act, cut the cup down to the 
level of the wine that remained. These 
measures are still called Miserdbelchen, 
or "wretched little remainders." 

The Mosel has but few tributary- 
streams of importance : its own course 
is as winding, as wild and as romantic 
as that of the Rhine itself. The most 
interesting part of the very varied scenery 
of this river is not the castles, the antique 
towns, the dense woods or the teeming 
vineyards lining rocks where a chamois 
could hardly stand — all this it has in com- 
mon with the Rhine — but the volcanic 
region of the Eifel, the lakes in ancient 
craters, the tossed masses of lava and 
tufa, the great wastes strewn with dark 
boulders, the rifts that are called valleys 
and are like the Iceland gorges, the poor, 
starved villages and the extraordinary rus- 
ticity, not to say coarseness, of the inhab- 
itants. This grotesque, interesting country 
— unique, I believe, on the continent of 
Europe — lies in a small triangle between 
the Mosel, the Belgian frontier and the 
Schiefer hills of the Lower Rhine : it goes 
by the names of the High Eifel, with the 
H igh Acht, the Kellberg and the Niirburg ; 
the Upper ( Vorder) Eifel, with Gerolstein, 
a ruined castle, and Daun, a pretty vil- 
lage ; and the Snow-Eifel [Schnee Eifel), 
contracted by the speech of the country 
into Schneifel. The last is the most cu- 
rious, the most dreary, the least visited. 
Walls of sharp rock rise up over eight 
hundred feet high round some of its 
sunken lakes — one is called the Powder 
Lake— and the level above this abyss 
stretches out in moors and desolate 
downs, peopled with herds of lean 
sheep, and marked here and there by 
sepulchral, gibbet - looking signposts, 
shaped like a rough T and set in a heap 
of loose stones. It is a great contrast to 
turn aside from this landscape and look 
on the smiling villages and pretty wood- 
•ed scenery of the valley of the Mosel 



proper ; the long lines of handsome, 
healthy women washing their linen on 
the banks ; the old ferryboats crossing 
by the help of antique chain-and-rope 
contrivances ; the groves of old trees, 
with broken walls and rude shrines, re- 
minding one of Southern Italy and her 
olives and ilexes ; and the picturesque 
houses in Kochem, in Daun, in Trar- 
bach, in Bernkastel, which, however un- 
tiring one may be as a sightseer, hardly 
warrant one as a writer to describe and 
re-describe their beauties. Kliisserath, 
however, we must mention, because its 
straggling figure has given rise to a local 
proverb — "As long as Kliisserath;" and 
Neumagen, because of the legend of Con- 
stantine, who is said to have seen the 
cross of victory in the heavens at this 
place, as well as at Sinzig on the Rhine, 
and, as the more famous legend tells us, 
at the Pons Milvium over the Tiber. 

The Mosel wine-industry has much 
the same features as that of the Rhine, 
but there is a great difference between 
the French wines, which are mostly red, 
and the German, which are mostly white. 
Among the latter hundreds of spurious, 
horrible concoctions for the foreign mar- 
ket usurp the name of Mosel wine. It 
is hardly necessary even to mention the 
pretty names by which the real wines 
are known, and which may be found on 
any wine-card at the good, unpretending 
inns that make Mosel travelling a spe- 
cial delight. The Saar wines are included 
among the Mosel, and the difference is 
not very perceptible. 

The last glance we take at the beau- 
ties of this neighborhood is from the 
mouth of the torrent - river Eltz as it 
dashes into the Eifel, washing the rock 
on which stands the castle of Eltz. The 
building and the family are an exception 
in the history of these lands : both exist 
to this day, and are prosperous and un- 
daunted, notwithstanding all the efforts 
of enemies, time and circumstances to 
the contrary. The strongly-turreted wall 
runs from the castle till it loses itself in 
the rock, and the building has a home- 
like, inhabited, complete look; which, 
in virtue of the quaint irregularity and 
magnificent natural position of the castle, 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



6r 




62 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



standing guard over the foaming Eltz, 
does not take from its romantic appear- 
ance, as preservation or restoration too 
often does. 

Not far from Coblenz, and past the 
island of Nonnenwerth, is the old tenth- 
century castle of Sayn, which stood until 
the Thirty Years' War, and below it, 
quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretend- 
ing, lies the new house of the family of 
Sayn-Wittgenstein, built in 1848, where, 
during a stay at Ems, we paid a visit 
of two days. The family were great 
Italian travellers, and we had met in 
Rome more than twenty years before, 
when the writer and the boys, whom I 
met again — the one as an officer of the 
Prussian army, and the other as a Bonn 
student — were children together. At din- 
ner one evening at this new Sayn house, 
as we were tasting some Russian dish of 
soured milk (the mother was a Russian), 
we reminded each other of our ball on 
Twelfth Night at Rome, when the young- 
est of these boys happened to become 
king "by the grace of the bean," and 
spent some hours seated in state with 
gilt-paper crown and red-velvet mantle 
till he was too sleepy to oversee his sub- 
jects' revels any longer ; of a day when 
the pope was to "create" several car- 
dinals, and of the young "king's" un- 
shaken belief that he would have the 
scarlet hat sent him if he only waited 
long enough at the window to look oiit 
for the messengers, and of his consequent 
watch all day, seeing the carriages pass 
and repass and the bustle of a festa go 
on, till the sunset flushed over St. Peter's 
in the distance, and the disappointment 
became certain at last. Of not much 
more manly pastimes did the Bonn 
student have to tell, for the slitting of 
noses was then in high favor, and a bit 
of advice was gravely recounted as hav- 
ing come from a doctor to an obstinate 
duellist, " not to get his nose cut off a 
fifth time, as the sewing had got so 
shaky by repetition that he could not 
answer for the nose sticking on if touch- 
ed once more." The house was really 
beautiful, and furnished with a taste which 
had something Parisian, and yet also 
something individual, about it. The par- 



quet floors of inlaid and polished wood 
used in Germany were here seen to their 
greatest perfection in some of the rooms ; 
but what most struck me was a Moorish 
chamber lighted from above — a small, 
octagon room, with low divans round 
the walls and an ottoman in the centre, 
with flowers in concealed pots cunning- 
ly introduced into the middle of the 
cushions, while glass doors, half screen- 
ed by Oriental-looking drapery, led into 
a small grotto conservatory with a foun- 
tain plashing softly among the tropical 
plants. There was also a good collection 
of pictures in a gallery, besides the paint- 
ings scattered through the living rooms ; 
but the garden was perhaps as much a 
gem to its owner's mind as anything in 
the house, as an " English " garden al- 
ways is to a foreigner. There, in the late 
afternoon of that day, came one of the 
Prussian royal family and paid the mis- 
tress of the house an informal friendly 
visit, taking "five-o'clock tea" in the 
English fashion, and with a retinue of 
two or three attendants making the tour 
of the close-shaven lawns, the firm grav- 
elled walks and the broad and frequent 
flights of steps that led from one terraced 
flower-garden to another. These were 
courtly and educated descendants of ter- 
rible scourges of mankind in old days — 
of Sayns who were simply robbers and 
highwaymen, levying bloody toll on the 
Coblenz merchants' caravans, and of 
Brandenburgs who were famous for their 
ravages and raids. Times have changed 
no less than buildings, and the houseful 
of pictures and treasures is no more un- 
like the robber- nest destroyed in war by 
other robbers than the young Bonn stu- 
dent is unlike his rough-and-ready fore- 
fathers. 

As we push our way down the Rhine 
we soon come to another such contrast, 
the little peaceful town of Neuwied, a 
sanctuary for persecuted Flemings and 
others of the Low Countries, gathered 
here by the local sovereign. Count Fred- 
erick 111. He gave them each a plot of 
land, built their houses and exempted 
them from all dues and imposts, besides 
granting them full freedom of worship ; 
but not for them alone was this boon, for 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



63 



as other wars made other exiles, so were 
all and every welcome to Neuwied, and 
the place even now contains Catholics, 
-Lutherans, Calvinists, Mennonites and 
Quakers, all living in peace together. 
The United Brethren (or Moravians) 
founded a colony here in 1750. The 
honesty of these people is proverbial, 
their simplicity of life is patriarchal, and 
the artist at least will not object to their 
manners, for the sake of the pleasing cos- 
tume of their women, whose white caps 
look akin to the peaceful, rural back- 
ground of their life, red and blue bands 
on these caps respectively distinguishing 
the married from the unmarried women. 
The little brook that gives its name to 
the village runs softly into the Rhine 
under a rustic bridge and amid murmur- 
ing rushes, while beyond it the valley 
gets narrower, rocks begin to rise over 
the Rhine-banks, and the scenery after 
Andernach becomes again what we so 
admired at Bingen and Bornhofen. 

Andernach is the Rocky Gate of 
the Rhine, and if its scenery were not 
enough, its history, dating from Roman 
times, would make it interesting. How- 
ever, of its relics we can only mention, 
en passant, the parish church with its 
four towers, all of tufa, the dungeons 
under the council -house, significantly 
called the "Jews' bath," and the old 
sixteenth- century contrivances for load- 
ing Rhine-boats with the millstones in 
which the town still drives a fair trade. 
At the mouth of the Brohl we meet the 
volcanic region again, and farther up the 
valley through which this stream winds 
come upon the retired little watering- 
place of Tonnistein, a favorite goal of 
the Dutch, with its steel waters ; and 
Wassenach, with what we may well call 
its dust-baths, stretching for miles inland, 
up hills full of old craters, and leaving 
us only at the entrance of the beech- 
woods that have grown up in these caul- 
dron-like valleys and fringe the blue 
Laachersee, the lake of legends and of 
fairies. One of these Schlegel has ver- 
sified, the "Lay of the Sunken Castle," 
with the piteous tale of the spirits im- 
prisoned ; and Simrock tells us in rhyme 
of the merman who sits waiting for a 



mortal bride ; while Wolfgang Miiller 
sings of the "Castle under the Lake," 
where at night ghostly torches are light- 
ed and ghostly revels held, the story of 
which so fascinates the fisherman's boy 
who has heard of these doings from his 
grandmother that as he watches the en- 
chanted waters one night his fancy plays 









ORTENSTEIN. 

him a cruel trick, and he plunges in to 
join the revellers and learn the truth. 
Local tradition says that Count Henry 
II. and his wife Adelaide, walking here 
by night, saw the whole lake lighted up 
from within in uncanny fashion, and 
founded a monastery in order to coun- 
teract the spell. This deserted but scarce- 
ly-ruined building still exists, and con- 



64 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



tains the grave of the founder : the 
twelfth-century decoration, rich and de- 
tailed, is almost whole in the oldest part 
of the monastery. The far-famed Ger- 
man tale of Genovefa of Brabant is 
here localized, and Henry's son Sieg- 
fried assigned to the princess as a hus- 
band, while the neighboring grotto of 
Hochstein is shown as her place of 
refuge. On our way back to the Rocky 
Gate we pass through the singular little 
town of Niedermendig, an hour's distance 
from the lake — a place built wholly of 
dark gray lava, standing in a region 
where lava -ridges seam the earth like 
the bones of antediluvian monsters, but 
are made more profitable by being quar- 
ried into millstones. There is some- 
thing here that brings part of Wales to 
the remembrance of the few who have 
seen those dreary slate-villages — dark, 
damp, but naked, for moss and weeds 
do not thrive on this dampness as they 
do on the decay of other stones — which 
dot the moorlands of Wales. The fences 
are slate ; the gateposts are slate ; the 
stiles are of slate ; the very "sticks " up 
which the climbing roses are trained 
are of slate ; churches, schools, houses, 
stables, are all of one dark iron-blue 
shade ; floors and roofs are alike ; hearth- 
stones and threshold-stones and grave- 
stones, all of the same material. It is 
curious and depressing. This volcanic 
region of the Rhine, however, has so 
many unexpected beauties strewn pell- 
mell in the midst of stony barrenness 
that it also bears some likeness to Na- 
ples and Ischia, where beauty of color, 
and even of vegetation, alternate sur- 
prisingly with tracts of parched and 
rocky wilderness pierced with holes 
whence gas and steam are always 
rising. 

Sinzig, on the left bank of the last gorge 
of the Rhine, besides its legend of Con- 
stantine has a convent said to have 
been built by the empress Helena; and 
in this convent a mummied body of 
a long -dead monk, canonized by pop- 
ular tradition, and remarkable for the 
journey to Paris which his body took 
and returned from unharmed in the days 
of Napoleon I. On the opposite shore. 



not much lower down, is another of the 
numberless pilgrimage - chapels with 
which the Rhine abounds, and the old 
city of Linz, with an authentic history 
dating from the ninth century, telling 
of an independence of any but nominal 
authority for some time, and at last of a 
transfer of the lordship of the old town 
from the Sayns to the archbishops of Co- 
logne. This supremacy had to be kept 
up by the "strong hand," of which the 
ruined fortress is now the only remind- 
er; but there is a more beautiful mon- 
ument of old days and usages in the 
thirteenth-century church of St. Martin, 
not badly restored, where the stained- 
glass windows are genuinely mediaeval, 
as well as the fresco on gold ground rep- 
resenting the "Seven Joys of Mary," 
painted in 1463. Just above Remagen 
lies the Victoria -berg, named after the 
crown-princess of Prussia, the princess- 
royal of England, and this is the even- 
ing resort of weary Remageners — a love- 
ly public garden, with skilfully - man- 
aged vistas, and a "Victoria temple," 
placed so as to command the five pret- 
tiest views up and down the stream, as 
well as over the woodland behind the 
town. Let not the classic name of " tem- 
ple" deceive us, however, for this is a 
genuine G^^man arbor, picturesque and 
comfortable, with a conical roof of state- 
ly and rustic pillars, seats and balustrade 
rising from the steep bank on which the 
' ' lookout "is perched. The winding Ahr, 
coming from the tufa-plateau of the Eifel 
and watering a pretty valley full of old 
castles and churches, rolls its waters into 
the Rhine in this neighborhood, and in 
summer no trip is so pleasant to the cit- 
izens of Bonn and Cologne, and indeed 
to many tourists if they have time to 
breathe. But in winter the scenery is 
worthy of the New World. The dark 
rocks and narrow slits of valleys piled 
with snow and crusted with ice, the lock- 
ed waterfalls and caves with portcullises 
of icicles let down across their mouths, 
make a pendant for the splendid and lit- 
tle-known scenery of American moun- 
tains in January. By one of the castles, 
a ruin belonging to the Steins of Nas- 
sau, poetically called Landskrone, or the 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



65 



" Land's Crown," from its beautiful situa- 
tion on a basalt hill, is a perfectly-pre- 
served chapel perched on the top of the 
rock, where, says the legend, the daugh- 
ter of the besieged lord of the castle once 
took refuee during: a local war. The 



sacristy has an unusual shape, ^ and is 
hewn out of the rock itself; and here it 
was that the maiden sat in safety, the 
rock closing over the cleft by which she 
had crept in, and a dove finding its way 
in every day with a loaf to feed her, while 




COURT OF JUSTICE, AHRWEILER. 



a spring within the cave supplied her with 
water. Legends have grown over every 
stone of this poetic land like moss and 
lichen and rock-fern ; and at Beul, a 
small bathing-place with a real geyser 
and a very tolerable circle of society, 



we come across the universal story of 
a golden treasure sunk in a castle-well 
and guarded by a giant. The old, world- 
forgotten town has its hall of justice and 
all the shell of its antique civic parapher- 
nalia, while at present it is a sleepy, con- 



66 



DOWN TBE RHINE. 



tented, rural place, with country carts and 
country riders by families crowding it on 
market-days, and making every yard of 
the old street a picture such as delights 
the traveller from cities whose plan is 
conveniently but not picturesquely that 
of a chess-board. The baths, like those 
of Schlangenbad, are in great favor with 
nervous women, and like that neighbor- 
hood too, so has this its miniature Olivet 
and Calvary, the devout legacy of some 
unknown crusader, who also founded 
at Ahrweiler the Franciscan monastery 
called Calvary Hill. These " calvaries," 
in many shapes and degrees, are not 
uncommon in Catholic Germany ; "sta- 
tions of the cross" — sometimes groups 
of painted figures, life-size, sometimes 
only small shrines with a framed picture 
within — mark the distances up the hill, 
at the top of which is a representation of 
the crucifixion ; and as the agony in the 
garden is not included in the "stations," 
there is generally at the foot of the hill 
an additional shrine in a natural cave 
or surrounded by artificial rock -work. 
The prettiest part of the Ahr valley is 
at and about Walporzheim, which the 
Diisseldorf artists have, by reason of its 
famous wine quite as much as of its ro- 
mantic scenery, chosen for the place of 
their frequent feasts, half picnic, half 
masque, when their get-up rivals that of 
any carnival, not even excepting that of 
the '' Krewe of Komus " or those other 
displays peculiar to Belgium and Hol- 
land of which the late celebration of the 
"Pacification of Ghent" was an example. 
The Rhine once more ! and now in- 
deed we shall hardly leave it again, but 
this is the last part in which we can en- 
joy the peculiar beauties that make it 
different from any other river in the 
world. The Swiss Rhine is a mountain- 
torrent, the Dutch Rhine a sluggish mud 
puddle, but the German Rhine is an his- 
toric river. Quite as legendary as his- 
toric, however; and perhaps that has 
made its charm in the eyes of foreign- 
ers even more than its national associa- 
tions, dear to the native mind ; and here, 
between Rolandseck, Nonnenwerth and 
Drachenfels, poetry takes precedence of 
history, and we do not want the antic ua- 



ry to come and shatter the legend of 
Roland of Roncesval's fidelity to the 
Lady of Drachenfels, even after her 
vows in Nonnenwerth convent, with his 
pitiless array of dates and parade of ob- 
vious impossibilities. But I pass over the 
legendary details that make this region 
so interesting. What will better bear 
repetition is some description of the sce- 
nery lying inland from the shores, the 
natural Quadrilateral, containing minor 
mountains, such as the Siebengebirge (or 
the Seven Hills) and the Bonner Alps, 
and encircling also the volcanic region 
between Honnef and DoUendorf. These 
hills with their step - and - terrace forma- 
tion were once fortified by Valentinian 
against the formidable Frankish hordes, 
and German poetry early began to find 
scenery in them worthy of its national 
epic, and so laid the scene of the Saga 
of Wilkina among these mountains and 
valleys. Here, above the legends of 
Roland and Siegfried and the Christian 
captive, who, exposed to the dragon of 
the rock, vanquished him by the cross, 
so that he fell backward and broke his 
neck, is the solid remembrance of castles 
built on many of these Rhine - hills, de- 
fences and bulwarks of the archbishops 
of Cologne against the emperors of Ger- 
many. But Drachenfels keeps another 
token of its legend in its dark-red wine, 
called "dragon's blood." (Could any 
teetotaller have invented a more sig- 
nificant name ?) One has often heard 
of the unbelieving monk who stumbled 
at the passage in Scripture which de- 
clares that a thousand years are but as 
one day to the Lord, and the consequent 
taste of eternity which he was miracu- 
lously allowed to enjoy while he wan- 
dered off for a quarter of an hour, as he 
thought, but in reality for three hundred 
years, following the song of a nightin- 
gale. The abbey of Heisterbach claims 
this as an event recorded in its books, 
and its beautiful ruins and wide naves 
with old trees for columns are, so says 
popular rumor, haunted by another wan- 
derer, an abbot with snow-white beard, 
who walks the cloisters at night counting 
the graves of his brethren, and vainly 
seeking his own, which if he once find 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



67 



/ 



/" 



IJ y 










DRACHF.XFF.LS. 



68 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



his penance will be over. This part of 
the Rhine was the favorite home of many 
of the poets who have best sung of the 
national river : a cluster of townlets re- 
calls no less than five of them to our 
mind — Unkel, where Freiligrath chose 
his home ; Menzerberg, where Simrock 
lived ; Herresberg, Pfarrins's home ; 
Konigswinter, Wolfgang Miiller's birth- 
place ; and Oberkassel, that of Gottfried 
Kinkel. Rhondorf shows us a monu- 
ment of one of the last robber-lords of 
Drachenfels, and Honnef a smiling mod- 
ern settlement, a very Nice of the North, 
where the climate draws together people 
of means and leisure, litterateurs, retired 
merchants and collectors of art-treasures, 
as well as health-seekers. These little 
colonies, of which most of the large cities 
on the Rhine have a copy in miniature, 
even if it be not a bathing-place, are the 
places in which to seek for that domestic 
taste and refinement which some hasty 
and prejudiced critics have thought fit 
to deny to the Fatherland. 

The scenery of the Rhine begins to 
lose its distinctive features as we near 
Bonn : plains replace rocks, and the 
waters flow more sluggishly. Bonn is 
alive enough : its antiquities of Roman 
date are forgotten in its essentially mod- 
ern bustle, for the heart of its prosperity 
is of very recent date, the university hav- 
ing been founded only in 1777, and after 
the troubles of the Revolution reorgan- 
ized in 1 81 8. It has grown with a giant 
growth, and has reckoned among its pro- 
fessors Niebuhr, Schlegel, Arndt, Dahl- 
mann, Johann Miiller, Ritschl, Kinkel, 
Simrock and other less world-famous but 
marvellous specialists. Then there is the 
memory of Beethoven, the honor of the 
town, which is his birthplace and has 
put up a monument to him, and the last 
modern element that has effaced the old 
recollections — the numerous English col- 
ony — not to mention the rich foreigners 
whom perhaps the university, perhaps 
the scenery, and perhaps the heedless 
fashion that sets in a tide now toward 
this place, now toward that, have drawn 
to the new Bonn. Poppelsdorf Castle, 
now the museum of natural history, and 
the fine groves and gardens attached to 



it, now a public promenade, have the 
brisk, business-like look of a "live" 
place : the building, it is true, is modern, 
having been built in 17 15. But if we are 
obstinate enough to search for signs of 
the days when archbishops ruled instead 
of dukes and kings, we shall find old re- 
mains, the cathedral of course included, 
and nowhere a more curious one than 
the Kreuzberg, a place of pilgrimage, 
where the church of 1627 has replaced 
an old wood-shrine : its rich gateway was 
intended to represent the front of Pontius 
Pilate's palace at Jerusalem, and on it are 
frescoes of the various scenes of the Pas- 
sion. Within this thirty marble steps lead 
up into a vestibule in imitation of the 
Scala Santa in Rome, and pilgrims went 
up these stairs only on their knees. The 
vaults used until lately to contain a quan- 
tity of dried or mummied bodies of Ser- 
vite monks (that order once had a con- 
vent here), reminding one of the ghast- 
ly Capuchin crypts in Rome, in Syracuse 
and in Malta. This neighborhood is rich 
in pilgrimage-shrines and legends, and 
Simrock has preserved a tale of the Devil 
which is a little out of the common run. 
He and the Wind, it is said, once went 
by a certain Jesuit church in company, 
and the former begged the latter to wait 
a moment for him, as he had some busi- 
ness within. The Devil never reappear- 
ed, and the Wind is still blowing perpet- 
ually round the building, waiting and 
calling in vain. The old myth of Bar- 
barossa waiting in his cave, his beard 
grown round and round the stone table 
on which he leans his sleepy head, which 
in another form meets us in the Mosel 
Valley, repeats itself in Wolfsberg, not 
far from Siegburg, near Bonn. I won- 
der whether the English anglers and 
oarsmen, and the pretty girls ready to 
flirt with the students and give away the 
prizes at an archery-meeting or a regatta, 
ever think of these musty old legends 
looked up by scholars out of convent 
chronicles and peasants' fireside talk ? 
The difference between past and present 
is not greater or more startling than is 
their likeness, the groundwork of human 
nature being the same for ever. Especial- 
ly in these old lands, how like the life of 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



69 




MARKET-PLACE AT WORMS. 



7° 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



to-day to that of hundreds of years ago 
in all that makes life real and intense ! 
The same thing in a mould of other 
shape, the same thoughts in a speech a 
little varied, the same motives under a 
dress a little less natural and crude — 
even the same pleasures in a great de- 
gree, for the wine-flask played fully as 
great a part in old German times as it 
does now. 

" Holy Cologne " seems at first an im- 
personation of the olden time, but its 
busy wharves, crowded shipping and tall 
warehouses tell us another tale. Indeed, 
Cologne is more rich than holy, and its 
commercial reputation is quite as old as 
its religious one. The country around is 
flat and uninteresting, but Cologne mer- 
chants have made Briihl a little paradise 
in spite of this ; and their country-houses 
of all styles, with balconies, verandas, 
porches, piazzas, English shrubbery and 
flower-gardens, conservatories and gay 
boats, lawns and statues, make even the 
monotonous banks of the sluggish Rhine 
beautiful in spite of Nature. Then comes 
a reminder of old times — the towers 
and fortifications, which are still stand- 
ing, though now turned into public gar- 
dens and drives that stretch out both on 
the river and the land side ; but the for- 
mer, Am Thurinchen, forming a sort 
of parapeted quay, crossed by massive 
battlemented gateways, is the most fash- 
ionable and commands the best views. 
The trees almost hide the shipping, .as 
their predecessors no doubt did eighteen 
hundred years ago and more, when the 
Ubier tribe of barbarians, a commercial 
as well as warlike people, undertook to 
ferry over the whole of Cresar's army to 
the right bank of the Rhine in their own 
boats. The quays swarm now with ho- 
tels, and these in summer swarm with 
strangers from all countries — pilgrims of 
Art and Nature, if no longer of religion 
— and the old town becomes in their 
eyes less a solid, real city with a long 
history than a museum opened for their 
special behoof. And indeed these Ger- 
man places seem to take kindly to this 
part, for they rival each other in modern 
amusements and gauds set out to lure 
the light-minded. Music-halls and beer- 



gardens, theatres and cafes, illuminated 
promenades and stalls full of tempting 
flagons labeled "genuine eau de Co- 
logne," are cunningly arrayed to turn 
away the mind from the stately antique 
churches and houses of Cologne. Every 
one has heard of the cathedral, many 
have seen it, and more have seen at least 
photographs of great accuracy, and pic- 
tures of it which, if less strict in detail, 
give it a more lifelike look and include 
some of its surroundings. The church 
of St. Gereon, a martyr of the Theban 
Legion massacred at Cologne to a inan 
for refusing to worship the imperial en- 
signs, under which no one denied that 
they had fought like lions, is a massive 
Romanesque building older than the ca- 
thedral, dating from the days of Constan- 
tine and Saint Helena. The church of 
the Holy Apostles is a basilica with 
rounded apse and four octagon towers, 
one at each corner of the nave. St. 
Peter's church, the interior terribly mod- 
ernized by the Renaissance, has for an 
altar-piece Rubens's picture of the Cf'u- 
cifixion of Saint Peter. The Giirzenich 
House, now used for public balls and 
imperial receptions, is a magnificent fif- 
teenth - century building, adorned with 
dwarf towers at each corner, a high, 
carved and stone-roofed niche with statue 
over the round -arched door, transom 
windows filled with stained glass, and 
carvings of shields, animal heads, col- 
onnettes and other devices between and 
above these windows. The council- 
house or town-hall has a beautiful col- 
onnade supporting arches, and a quaint 
nondescript creature whose abyss -like 
maw opens wide and gapes horribly at 
the beholder each time the clock strikes. 
A bas-relief in the hall represents a cu- 
rious incident in the civic history of the 
town, the successful struggle of Burgo- 
master Gryn with a lion, the show and 
pet of some treacherous nobles who in- 
vited Gryn to dinner, and under pretence 
of showing him their very unusual ac- 
quisition, pushed him into the stone re- 
cess and closed the gate upon him. The 
burgomaster thrust his hand and arm, 
wrapped in his thick cloak, down the 
animal's throat, while he pierced him 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



71 







72 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



throu.E^h and through with the sword in 
his other hand. The struggles between 
Cologne and her archbishops were hot 
and incessant, much as they were in 
other ecclesiastical sovereignties. Of 
these there is no longer a trace in the 
present, though the might of the burghers 
exists still, and the city that was once call- 
ed the kernel of the Hanseatic League, and 
boasted of its Lorenzo de' Medici in the 
person of the good and enlightened Mat- 
thias Overstolz, has now almost as proud 
a place among merchants as Hamburg or 
Frankfort. Before we pass to more mod- 
ern things let us not forget the shrine of 
the Three Kings in the cathedral, which 
is simply a mass of gold and jewelry, in 
such profusion as to remind one of noth- 
ing less than the golden screen studded 
with uncut gems called the Palla d' Oro 
at San Marco, directly behind the high 
altar, and the Golden Frontal of St. Am- 
brose at Milan — golden altar it might 
more fitly be named, as each side of the 
altar is a slab of solid gold, almost hid- 
den by its breastplate of precious stones. 
The same warrior-archbishop, Conrad of 
Hochstaden, who, driven from Cologne, 
transferred his see to Bonn, was the first 
founder of the cathedral, though in those 
days of slow and solid building to found 
was not to finish. The cathedral is not 
finisJied even yet. The present scenes 
in which Cologne shines are many — for 
instance, its lively market on the Neu- 
markt, and the country costumes one 
sees there each week as the stalls and 
carts, easily drawn by dogs and donkeys, 
are set up in the square ; the parade of 
the old guard, called the " Sparks of Co- 
logne " from their scarlet uniforms ; and 
the Carnival, a high opportunity for fun 
and display, and specially seized upon 
to reproduce historic figures and inci- 
dents, such as the half-comic Ceckcr- 
Berndchen, a typical figure in red and 
white, the colors of the town, with a 
shield in one hand and a wooden sabre 
in the other, shouting the traditional warn- 
ing cry, " Geek los Geek e/atis /" the an- 
tique procession of burgher youths and 
maidens, the latter with large white caps 
and aprons, and the former in three-cor- 
nered hats, black breeches and stockings 



and thick low shoes. Then follows a 
fancy ball in the Giirzenich House, in 
which the lineal descendants of the 
burgomasters and councillors of old 
come out in ancient family trappings of 
black cloth or velvet, stiff whiite ruff and 
heavy gold chain from shoulder to shoul- 
der, which their forefathers once wore in 
earnest. Among the museums and oth- 
er additions of modern taste is the beau- 
tiful botanical garden and large conser- 
vatory, where flourish tropical plants in 
profusion — a thing we find in many even 
of the secondary German towns. 

The Rhine itself is becoming so un- 
interesting that it is hardly worth while 
lingering on its banks, and as we get 
near thrifty Holland the river seems to 
give itself up wholly to business, for 
between Cologne and Aachen (Aix-la- 
Chapelle) are miles upon miles of manu- 
factories, workshops and mills ; ware- 
houses connected with coal-mines ; dirty 
barges blackening the water ; iron-works 
and carpet-mills ; cloth and paper-mills 
and glass-works— a busy region, the mod- 
ern translation of the myth of gnomes 
making gold out of dross in the bowels 
of the earth. 

Aachen has a double life also, like 
many Rhine towns : it is the old imperial 
coronation city, the city of Charlemagne, 
with a corona of legends about it ; and 
it is also the modern spa, the basket of 
tempting figs with a concealed asp some- 
where within, a centre of fashion, gossip 
and gambling. How is it that people 
who profess to fly from the great capi- 
tals for the sake of a "little Nature " are 
so unable to take Nature at her word 
and confess her delights to be enough for 
them ? They want a change, they say ; 
yet where is the change ? The table is 
the same, high-priced, choice and varied ; 
the society is the same, the gossip is the 
same, the amusements are the same, the 
intrigues the same ; the costume equally 
elaborate and expensive ; the restless 
idleness as great and as hungry for ex- 
citement: all the artificiality of life is 
transported bodily into another place, 
and the only difference lies in the frame 
of the picture. Exquisites from the cap- 
ital bring their own world with them, 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



73 




74 



DOWN THE RHINE. 



and their humbler imitators scrape to- 
gether their hard winter's earnings and 
spend them in making an attempt cava- 
lierly to equal for a short time the tired- 
out "man of the world" and "woman 
of fashion." Some come to find matches 
for sons and daughters ; others to put in 
the thin end of the wedge that is to open a 
way for them "into society ;" others come 
to flirt; others to increase their business 
relations ; others to out-dress and out- 
drive social rivals ; others to while away 
the time which it is unfashionable to spend 
cheaply in the city ; others for — shall we 
say higher ? because — political causes : 
few indeed for health, fewer still for rest. 
You see the same old wheel go round 
year after year, with the same faces grow- 
ing more and more tired and more and 
more hopeless. 

Of Aachen's legendary, historical, ro- 
mantic side who has not heard ? — of the 
castle of Frankenburg on the outskirts, 
where Charlemagne's daughter carried 
her lover Eginhardt through the snow, 
that their love might not be betrayed by 
a double track of footsteps ; of Charle- 
magne's palace, where his school, the 
Palatine, presided over by English Al- 
cuin, was held ; and the baths where a 
hundred men could swim at ease at one 
time; and Charlemagne's cathedral, of 
which the present one has preserved only 
the octagonal apse ; of his tomb, where 
he sat- upright after death in imperial 
robes and on a marble throne (the latter 
is still shown) ; of the columns brought 
from Rome and Ravenna; of the mar- 
vellous and colossal corona of wax-lights 
which hangs by a huge iron chain from 
the vaulted roof; of the bronze doors. of 
the western gateway, now closed, but 
whose legend of the Devil is commem- 
orated by the iron figure of a she-wolf 
with a hole in her breast, and that of 
a pineapple, supposed to represent her 
spirit, of which she mourns the loss with 
open jaws and hanging tongue? The 
Devil is always cheated in these legends, 
and one wonders how it was that he did 
not show more cleverness in making his 
bargains. The cathedral still claims to 
possess precious relics — of the Passion, 
the Holy Winding-sheet, the robe of the 



Blessed Virgin and the blood - stained 
cloth in which the body of Saint John 
the Baptist was wrapped. These in- 
volve a yearly pilgrimage from the near- 
er places, and a great feast every seventh 
year, when a holy fair is kept up for weeks 
round the cathedral. There is no better 
living specimen of the Middle Ages than 
such gatherings, and no doubt then, as 
now, there was some undercurrent of 
worldly excitement mingling with the 
flow of genuine devotion. Aachen's old 
cornhouse, the bridge gate and the many 
houses full of unobtrusive beauties of 
carving and metal-work lead us by hook 
and by crook — for the streets are very 
winding — out on the road to Burtschied, 
the hot-water town, whose every house 
has a spring of its own, besides the very 
gutters running mineral water, and the 
cooking spring in the open street boiling 
eggs almost faster than they can be got 
out again in eatable condition. This is 
another of the merchant villeggiaturas 
of Germany ; and a good many foreign- 
ers also own pretty, fantastic new houses, 
planted among others of every age from 
one to eight hundred years. 

It is so strange to come upon a purely 
modern town in this neighborhood that 
Exefeld strikes us as an anachronism. 
It is wholly a business place, created by 
the " dry-goods " manufactures that have 
grown up there, and are worth twenty 
million thalers a year to the enterprising 
owners, who rival Erench designs and 
have made a market for their wares in 
England and America. This is a great 
foil to old Roman Neuss, with its mas- 
sive gates, its tower attributed to Drusus 
— after whom so many bridges and tow- 
ers on the Rhine are named — and even 
to Diisseldorf, which, notv/ithstanding its 
modern part, twice as large as its old 
river front, has some beautiful antique 
pictures to show us, both in the costumes 
of its market-women, who wear red pet- 
ticoats with white aprons and flapping 
caps, and stand laughing and scolding in 
a high key by their dog-drawn carts, and 
in its council-house, an early Renaissance 
building with square, high-roofed turrets 
overlooking the market-place. In that 
little house, in a narrow street leading 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



75 



to the market, Heine was born ; in that 
wretched little architectural abortion, the 
theatre, a critical audience listened to 
Immermann's works ; and in the Kurz- 
enstrasse was born Peter von Cornelius, 
the restorer of German art. Schadow 
succeeded him at the head of the Acad- 
emy, and a new school of painting was 
firmly established in the old city, which 
had energy enough left in it to mark out 
another successful path for itself in trade. 
The new town is handsome, monotonous, 
rich and populous, but the galleries and 
museums somewhat make up for the lack 
of taste in private architecture. One of 
the most beautiful of the town's posses- 
sions is the old Jacobi house and garden, 
rescued from sale and disturbance by the 



patriotic artist-guild, who bought it and 
gave the garden to the public, while the 
house where Goethe visited his friend 
Jacobi became a museum of pictures, 
panelling, tapestry, native and foreign 
art-relics, etc., all open to the public. 
The gardens, with their hidden pKJols 
and marble statues, their water-lilies and 
overarching trees, their glades and lawns, 
have an Italian look, like some parts of 
the Villa Borghese near Rome, whose 
groves of ilexes are famous ; but these 
northern trees are less monumental and 
more feathery, though the marble gods 
and goddesses seem quite as much at 
home among them as among the laurel 
and the olive. 

Lady Blanche Murphy. 



1/ 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



BEFORE the change which has re- 
cently befallen the chief German 
watering - places, Baden — or, as it was 
more commonly called, Baden-Baden — 
was the most frequented, the most bril- 
liant and the most profitable " hell " in 
Europe. Its baths and medicinal waters 
were a mere excuse for the coming thith- 
er of a small number of the vast con- 
course which annually filled its hotels. 
In any case, they sank into compara- 
tively utter insignificance. It was not for 
water — at least not for the waters of any 
other stream than that of Pactolus — that 
the world came to Baden. Of course, 
the sums realized by the keepers of the 
hell were enormous ; and they found it 
to be their interest to do all that contrib- 
uted to make the place attractive on a 
liberal scale. Gardens, parks, miles of 
woodland walks admirably kept, excel- 
lent music in great abundance, vast sa- 
lons for dancing, for concerts, for read- 
ing-rooms, for billiard-rooms, etc. — all 
as magnificent as carving and gilding 
and velvet and satin could make them 
— were provided gratuitously, not for 
those only who played at the tables, but 



for all those who would put themselves 
within reach of the temptation to do so. 
And this liberal policy was found to an- 
swer abundantly. Very many of the 
water-cure places in the smaller states 
of Germany had their hells also, and did 
as Baden did, on a more modest scale. 
Then came the German unification and 
the great uprising of a German national 
consciousness. And German national 
feeling said that this scandal should no 
longer exist. A certain delay was ren- 
dered necessary by the contracts which 
were running between the different small 
governments and the keepers of the 
gambling - tables. But it was decreed 
that when the two or three years which 
were required for these to run out should 
be at an end, they should not be renew- 
ed. It was a serious resolution to take, 
for some half dozen or so of these little 
pleasure-towns believed, not without good 
reason, that the measure would be at 
once fatal to their prosperity and well- 
nigh to their existence. And of course 
there were not wanting large numbers 
of people who argued that the step was 
a quixotic one, as needless and fallacious 



76 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



in a moral point of view as fatal on the 
side of economic considerations. Could 
it be maintained that the governments 
in question had any moral duty in the 
matter save as regarded the lives and 
habits of their own people ? And these 
were not imperilled by the existence of 
the gambhng-tables. For it was notorious 
that each of these ducal and grand-ducal 
patrons of the blind goddess strictly for- 
bade their own subjects to enter the door 
of the play-saloons. And as to those 
who resorted to them, and supplied the 
abundant flow of gold that enriched the 
whole of each little state, could it be sup- 
posed that any one of these gamblers 
would be reformed or saved from the 
consequences of his vice by the shutting 
up of these tables ? It was difficult to an- 
swer this question in the affirmative. No 
liquor law ever prevented men from get- 
ting drunk, nor could it be hoped that 
any closing of this, that or the other hell 
could save gamblers from the indulgence 
of their darling passion. Nevertheless, it 
can hardly be seriously denied that the 
measure was the healthy outcome of a 
genuinely healthy and highly laudable 
spirit. "Ruin yourself, if you will, but 
you shall not come here for the purpose, 
and, above all, we will not touch the 
profit to be made out of your vice." This 
was the feeling of the German govern- 
ment, and, considering the amount of 
self-denial involved in the act, Germany 
deserves no small degree of honor and 
praise for having accomplished it. 

And now it is time to ask, Has Baden 
— for we will confine our attention to this 
ci-devant queen of hells — has Baden suf- 
fered that ruin which it was so confident- 
ly predicted would overtake her ? Baden 
Revisited, by one who knew her well 
in the old days of her wickedness and 
wealth, supplies the means for replying 
to the question. Unquestionably, in the 
mere matter of the influx of gold the town 
has suffered very severely. How were 
some four -and -twenty large hotels, be- 
sides a host of smaller ones, which often 
barely sufficed to hold the crowds at- 
tracted by the gambling-tables, to exist 
when this attraction ceased ? It might 
have been expected that a large number 



of these would at once have been shut 
up. But such has not been the case. I 
believe that not one has been closed. 
Nevertheless, a visitor's first stroll through 
the town, and especially in the alleys and 
gardens around the celebrated "Conver- 
sations-Haus," as it hypocritically called 
itself, is quite sufficient to show how 
great is the difference between Baden as 
it was and Baden as it is — between Baden 
the wealthy, gaudy, gay, privileged home 
of vice, and Baden moralized and turned 
from the error of its ways. And it can- 
not be denied that, speaking merely of 
the impression made upon the eye, the 
difference is all in favor of vice. "As 
ugly as sin " is a common phrase. But, 
unfortunately, the truth is that sin some- 
times looks extremely pretty, especially 
when well dressed and of an evening by 
gaslight. And it did, it must be owned, 
look extremely pretty at Baden. The 
French especially came there in those 
days in great numbers, and they brought 
their Parisian toilettes with them. And 
somehow or other, let the fact be ex- 
plained as it may — and, though per- 
haps easily explicable enough, 1 do not 
feel called upon to enter on the explana- 
tion here — one used in those wicked old 
days to see a great number of verv pretty 
women at Baden, which can hardly be 
said to be the case at Baden morahzed. 
The whole social atmosphere of the place 
was wholly and unmistakably different, 
and in outward appearance wicked Baden 
beat moral Baden hollow. It would not 
do in the old time to examine the gay 
scene which fluttered and glittered before 
the eyes much below the absolute exterior 
surface. The little town in those old 
days, as regarded a large proportion of 
the crowd which made it look so gay, 
was — not to put too fine a point upon it 
— a sink of more unmitigated black- 
guardism than could easily be found con- 
centrated within so small a compass on 
any other spot of the earth. A large 
number of the persons who now con- 
gregate m this beautiful valley look, to 
tell the truth, somewhat vulgar. "\''ulgar ? 
As if the flaunting crowds which seemed 
to insult the magnificent forests, the crystal 
streams and the smiling lawns with their 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



77 




78 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



finery were not saturated with a vulgarity 
of the most quintessential intensity ! Yes, 
but that only showed itself to the moral 
sense of those who could look a little be- 
low the surface, whereas the vulgarity 
that may be noted sunning itself in the 
trim gardens and sprawling on the satin 
sofas which are the legacy of the depart- 
ed wickedness is of the sort that shows 
itself upon the surface. In a word, moral 
Baden looks a little dowdy, and that 
wicked Baden never looked. 

The general determination at Baden 
when the terrible decree which put an 
end to its career of wealth and wicked- 
ness came upon it like a thunderbolt was 
of the kind expressed by the more forci- 
ble than elegant phrase, " Never say die !" 
The little town was determined to have a 
struggle for its existence. It still had its 
mineral waters, so highly valued by the 
Romans. The Romans, it may be re- 
marked en passant, seem to have dis- 
covered and profited by every mineral 
spring in Europe. Hardly one of the 
more important springs can be named 
which cannot be shown, either by direct 
historic testimony or by the still existing 
remains of baths and the like, to have 
been known to the universal conquerors. 
Well, Baden still had its waters, good for 
all the ills to which flesh is heir — capiti 
fluit utih's, utilis alveo. It still had its 
magnificent forests — pine and oak and 
beech -in most lovely juxtaposition and 
contrast. It had the interesting and 
charmingly picturesque ruins of its an- 
cient castle on the forest-covered hill 
above the town, perched on one mighty 
mass of porphyry, and surrounded by 
other ranges of the same rock, thrown 
into such fantastic forms that they seem 
to assume the appearance of rival castel- 
lated ruins built on Nature's own colos- 
sal plan, and such a world of strange 
forms of turrets and spires and isolated 
towers and huge donjons that the Devil 
has "pulpits" and "bridges" and "cham- 
bers" there, as is well known to all "tour- 
ists to be his wont in similar places. It 
had its other mediaeval baronial resi- 
dences situated in the depths of the for- 
est at pleasant distances for either driv- 
ing or walking. It had its delicious parks 



and gardens, beginning from the verv 
door of the " Conversations-Haus," with 
brilliantly-lighted avenues, gay withshops 
and gas-lamps, and gradually wandering 
away into umbrageous solitudes and hill- 
side paths lit by the moon alone — so grad- 
ually that she who had accepted an arm 
for a stroll amid the crowd in the bright 
foreground of the scene found herself en- 
joying solitude a deux before she had 
time to become alarmed or think what 
mamma would say. Then it had still 
the gorgeous halls, the ball-rooms, the 
concert-rooms, the promenading-rooms, 
with their gilding and velvet and satin 
furniture, which had been created by a 
wave of the wand of the great enchanter 
who presided at the green table. Why 
should not all these good things be turned 
to the service of virtue instead of vice ? 
Why should not respectability and moral- 
ity inherit the legacy of departed wicked- 
ness ? Why should not good and virtuous 
German Fraiileins, with their pale blue 
eyes and pale blond hair, do their in- 
nocent flirting amid the bowers where 
the Parisian demi-monde had outraged 
the chaste wood-nymphs by its uncon- 
genial presence ? The loathsome patch- 
ouli savor of the denizens of the Boule- 
vard would hardly resist the purifying 
breezes of one Black Forest winter. The 
notice to quit served on Mammon would 
be equally efficacious as regarded the 
whole of his crew. The whole valley 
would be swept clean of them, and sweet- 
ened and restored to the lovers of Na- 
ture in her most delicious aspect. Baden, 
emerging from the cold plunge-bath of 
its first dismay, determined that it should 
be so. The hotel-keepers, the lodging- 
house-keepers, the livery-stable-keepers, 
the purveyors of all kinds, screwed their 
courage to the sticking-place and deter- 
mined to go in for virtue, early hours and 
moderate prices. Well, yes ! moderate 
prices ! This was the severest cut of all. 
But there was no help for it. Virtue does 
prefer moderate prices. There could be 
no more of that reckless scattering of gold, 
no more of that sublime indifference to 
the figure at the foot of the bill, which 
characterized their former customers. 
What mattered a napoleon or so more 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



79 



or less in their daily expense to him or 
her whose every evening around the 
green table left them some thousands 
of francs richer or poorer than the morn- 
ing had found them ? There can be no 
doubt, I fear, that Baden would have 
much preferred a continuance in its old 
ways. But the choice was not permitted 
to it. It is therefore mailing a virtue of 
necessity, and striving to live under the 
new regime as best it may. And I am 
disposed to think that better days may 
yet be in store for it. At present, the 
preponderating majority of the visitors 
are Germans. There are naturally no 
French, who heretofore formed the ma- 
jority of the summer population. There 
are hardly any Americans, and very few 
English. Those of the class which used 
to find Baden delightful find it, or con- 
ceive that they would find it, so no more. 
And English and Americans of a different 
sort seem to have hardly yet become aware 
that they would find there a very differ- 
ent state of things from that which they 
have been accustomed to associate in 
idea with the name of the place. It must 
be supposed, however, that they will short- 
ly do so. The natural advantages and 
beauties of the place are so great, the ac- 
commodation is so good, and even in some 
respects the inheritance of the good things 
the gamblers have left behind them so 
valuable, that it is hardly likely that the 
place will remain neglected. Where else 
are such public rooms and gardens to be 
found ? The charge made at present for 
the enjoyment of all this is about six or 
eight cents a day. Such a payment could 
never have originally provided all that is 
placed at the disposal of the visitor. He 
used in the old times to enjoy it all abso- 
lutely gratuitously, unless he paid for it 
by his losses at the tables. Play pro- 
vided it all. But it is to be feared that 
the very modest payment named above 
will be found insufficient even to keep up 
the establishment which Mammon has 
bequeathed to Virtue. The ormolu and 
the carved cornices, and the fresco-paint- 
ed walls and the embroidered satin 
couches and divans, and the miles upon 
miles of garden-walks, have not indeed 
disappeared, as, according to all the or- 



thodox legends, such Devil's gifts should 
do, but they will wear out ; and I do not 
think that any eight cents a, day will 
suffice to renew them. But in the mean 
time you may avail yourself of them. 
You may lounge on the brocade-cover- 
ed divans which used to be but couches 
of thorns to so many of their occupants, 
undisturbed by any more palpitating 
excitement than that produced by the 
perusal of the daily paper. The lofty 
ceilings echo no more the hateful warn- 
ing croak of the croupier, " Faites votre 
jeu, messieurs. Le jeu est fait !" which 
used to be ceaseless in them from mid- 
day till midnight. There are no more 
studies to be made on the men and wo- 
men around you of all the expressions 
which eager avarice, torturing suspense 
and leaden despair can impart to the 
human countenance. The utmost you 
can hope to read on one of those placidly 
stolid German burgher faces is the out- 
ward and visible sign of the inward op- 
pression caused by too copious a repast 
at the one-o'clock table d'hote. It is the 
less disagreeable and less unhealthy sub- 
ject of contemplation of the two. But 
the truth remains that virtuous Baden 
does look somewhat dowdy. 

Just seventy-three years ago a change 
as great as that which has transformed 
Baden happened to an establishment 
which represented the old-world social 
system of Europe as completely and 
strikingly as Baden the "watering-place" 
— that is the modern phrase — did the Eu- 
rope of the latter half of the nineteenth 
century. In another green valley of 
this region, as beautiful as, or even more 
beautiful than, that of Baden, there exist- 
ed a gathering-place of the sort produced 
by the exigencies of a different stage of 
social progress — the convent of Aller- 
heiligen, or, as we should say. All Saints 
or AUhallows. It is within the limits of 
an easy day's excursion from Baden, and 
no visitor who loves "the merry green 
wood" should omit to give a day to Al- 
lerheiligen, for he will scarcely find in 
his wanderings, let thein be as extensive 
as they may, a more perfect specimen of 
the loveliest forest scenery. It is an old 



8o 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



remark, that the ancient ecclesiastics 
who selected the sites of the monastic 
establishments that were multiplied so 
excessively in ever)' country in Europe 
showed very excellent judgment and 
much practical skill in the choice of 
them. And almost every visit made to 
the spot where one of these cloister homes 
existed confirms the truth of the observa- 
tion, more especially as regards the com- 
munities belonging to the great Bene- 
dictine family. The often-quoted line 
about seeking " to merit heaven by mak- 
ing earth a hell," however well it may be 
applied to the practices of some of the 
more ascetic orders, especially the men- 
dicants, cannot with any reason be con- 
sidered applicable to the disciples of St. 
Benedict. In point of fact, at the time 
when the great and wealthy convents of 
this order were founded it was rather out- 
side the convent-wall that men were 
making the world a hell upon earth. 
And for those who could school them- 
selves to consider celibacy no unendura- 
ble evil it would be difficult to imagine a 
more favorable contrast than that offered 
by " the world " in the Middle Ages and 
the retreat of the cloister. A site well 
selected with reference to all the require- 
ments of climate, wood and water, and 
with an appreciative eye to the beauties 
of Nature, in some sequestered but fa- 
vored spot as much shut in from war and 
its troubles as mountains, streams and 
forests could shut it in ; a building often 
palatial in magnificence, always comfort- 
able, with all the best appliances for study 
which the age could afford ; with beauti- 
ful churches for the practice of a faith 
entirely and joyfully believed in ; with 
noble halls for temperate but not ascetic 
meals, connected by stairs by no means 
unused with excellent and extensive cel- 
lars ; with lovely cloisters for meditative 
pacing, and well-trimmed gardens for 
pleasant occupation and delight, — what 
can be imagined more calculated to en- 
sure all the happiness which this earth 
was in those days capable of affording ? 
Such a retreat was the convent of AUer- 
heiligen. It was founded for Premonstra- 
tfcnsian monks at the close of the twelfth 
century by Uta, duchess of Schawenburg, 



who concludes the deed of foundation, 
which still exists, with these words : "And 
if anybody shall do anything in any re- 
spect contrary to these statutes, he will 
for ever be subject to the vengeance of 
God and of all saints." Poor Duchess 
Uta ! Could her spirit walk in this val- 
ley, as lovely now as when she gave it to 
her monks, and look upon the ruins of 
the pile she raised, she would think that 
the vengeance of God and all saints had 
been incurred to a considerable extent 
by somebody. The waterfalls — seven of 
them in succession — made by the little 
stream that waters the valley immediate- 
ly after it has passed through the isolated 
bit of flat meadow-land on which the con- 
vent was built, continue to sing their un- 
ceasing song as melodiously as when the 
duchess Uta visited the spot and mark- 
ed it out for the " Gottes Haus " she was 
minded to plant there Her husband, 
the duke Welf, who had married her 
when she was a well -dowered widow, 
had been a very bad husband, which 
naturally tended to lead his neglected 
lady wife's mind in the direction of found- 
ing religious houses. He was duke of Alt- 
orf and Spoleto, the one possession lying 
on the shores of the Lake of Lucerne, and 
the other among the ilex-woods that over- 
look the valley of the Tiber — a strange 
conjunction of titles, which is in itself il- 
lustrative of the shape European history 
took in that day, and of the preponderat- 
ing part which Germany played in Italy 
and among the rulers of its soil. Being 
thus duke of Spoleto, Welf resided much 
in Italy, but does not seem to have found 
it necessary to take his German wife with 
him to those milder skies and easier so- 
cial moralities. Uta stayed at home amid 
the dark-green valleys of her native Black 
Forest, and planned cloister -building. 
Before the chart, however, which was 
to give birth to Allerheiligen was sign- 
ed, Duke Welf came home, and having 
had, it would seem, his fling to a very 
considerable extent, had reached by a 
natural process that time of life and that 
frame of mind which inclined him to 
join in his long-neglected wife's pietist- 
ic schemes. So they planned and drew 
up the statutes together, and the con- 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 




82 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



vent was founded and built, a son of Uta 
by her first husband being, as is record- 
ed, the first prior. 

It was not long before the young com- 
munity became rich. Such was the ordi- 
nary, the almost invariable, course of 
matters. Property was held on very un- 
stable conditions even by the great and 
powerful. The most secure of all tenures 
was that by which the Church held what 
was once her own. And in a state of 
things when men were persuaded both 
that it was very doubtful whether they 
would be able to keep possession of their 
property, especially whether they would 
be able to secure such possessions to 
those who were to come after them, and 
that the surest way to escape that retribu- 
tion in the next world which they fully 
believed to have been incurred by their 
deeds in this world was to give what they 
possessed to some monastic institution, 
it is not difficult to understand how and 
why monasteries grew rich. And it is 
equally intelligible that the result should 
have followed which did, as we know, 
follow almost invariably. As the mon- 
asteries became rich the monks became 
corrupt — first comfortable, then luxuri- 
ous, then licentious. The Benedictines 
escaped this doom more frequently than 
the other orders. Even after their great 
convents had become wealthy and pow- 
erful landlords they were often very good 
landlords, and <"he condition of their lands 
and of their tenants and vassals contrast- 
ed favorably with that of the lands and 
dependants of their lay neighbors. The 
superiority of the Benedictines in this re- 
spect was doubtless due to their studious 
and literary habits and proclivities. It is 
constantly urged that the cause of learn- 
ing and of literature owes a great debt of 
gratitude to the monks, but it should be 
said that this debt is due almost, exclu- 
sively to the sons of St. Benedict. 

But something more than this may 
be said for the community founded by 
Duchess Uta, the beautiful ruins of whose 
dwelling now complete the picturesque 
charm of this most exquisite valley. By 
a rare exception history has in truth noth- 
ing to say against them. Their record is 
quite clear. All remaining testimony de- 



clares that from their first establishment 
to the day of their dissolution the Aller- 
heiligen monks lived studious and blame- 
less lives. Possibly, the profound seclu- 
sion of their valley, literally shut in from 
the outer world by vast masses of thick 
roadless forests, may have contributed to 
this result, though similar circumstances 
do not in all cases seem to have ensured 
a similar consequence. Good fortune 
probably did much in the matter. A 
happy succession of three or four good 
and able abbots would give the place a 
good name and beget a good tradition in 
the community ; and this in such cases is 
half the battle. "Such and such goings- 
on may do elsewhere, but they won't suit 
Allerheiligen " — such a sentiment, once 
made common, would do much for the 
continuance of a good and healthy tra- 
dition. 

Accordingly, it was long before the 
sentence of dissolution went forth against 
the monastery of Allerheiligen — that sen- 
tence which was to produce a change in 
the place and all around it as momentous 
as that other sentence which some seventy 
years later went forth against Baden-Ba- 
den. It was not till 1802 that the mon- 
astery of Allerheiligen was dissolved ; 
and its extinction was due then not to 
any reason or pretext drawn from the 
conduct of the inmates, but to the re- 
ligious dissensions and political quarrels 
of princes and governments. But the 
doom was all the more irrevocably cer- 
tain. In all the countries in which mon- 
asteries have been abolished and Church 
property confiscated tales eagerly spread, 
and by no means wholly disbelieved 
even by the spoilers themselves, are 
current of the "judgments" and retri- 
bution which have sooner or later fallen 
on those who have been enriched by the 
secularization of Church property or who 
have taken part in the acts by which the 
Church has been dispossessed. But rare- 
ly has what the world now calls "chance" 
brought about what the Church would 
call so startlingly striking a manifesta- 
tion of the wrath of Heaven against the 
despoilers of "God's house." St. Nor- 
bert was the original founder of the Pre- 
monstratensian rule. And it was pre- 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



83 



cisely on St. Norbert's Day next after 
the dissolution of the monastery of Al- 
lerheiligen that a tremendous and — the 
local chroniclers say — unprecedented 
storm of thunder, lightning and hail 
broke over the woodland valley and the 
devoted fabric in such sort that the light- 
ning, more than once striking the build- 
ings, set them on fire and reduced the 
vast pile to the few picturesque ruins 
which now delight the tourist and the 
landscape painter. Could the purpose 
and intent of the supernal Powers have 
been more strongly emphasized or more 
clearly marked ? Truly, the scattered 
monks may have been excused for re- 
calling with awe, not unmingled with a 
sense of triumph, the prophetic denun- 
ciation of their foundress Uta, which has 
been cited above, against whoso should 
undo the pious deed she was doing. 
For more than six hundred years her 
work had prospered and her will had 
been respected, and now after all those 
centuries the warning curse was still po- 
tent. Neither thunder nor lightning, nor 
the anger of St. Norbert, however, avail- 
ed to rebuild the monastery or recall the 
monks. Their kingdom and the glory 
thereof has passed to another, even to 
Herr Mittenmeyer, Wzrth und Gastgeber, 
who has built a commodious hostelry close 
by the ruins, which are mainly those of 
the church, and on the site of the mo- 
nastic buildings, and who distributes a 
hospitality as universal, if not quite so 
disinterested, as that practised by his 
cowled predecessors. There, for the 
sum of six marks — about a dollar and 
a half — per diem you may find a well- 
furnished cell and a fairly well-supplied 
refectory, and may amuse yourself with 
pacing in the walks where St. Norbert's 
monks paced, looking on the scenes of 
beauty on which they gazed, and casting 
your mind for the nonce into the mould 
of the minds of those who so looked and 
mused. You may do so, indeed, thanks 
to Herr Mittenmeyer, with greater com- 
fort, materially speaking, than the old in- 
mates of the valley could have done. For 
the most charming and delicious walks 
have been made through the woods on 
either side of the narrow valley, and 



skilfully planned so as to show you all the 
very remarkable beauties of it. These, 
in truth, are of no ordinary kind. The 
hillsides which enclose the valley are 
exceedingly steep, almost precipitous 
indeed in some places, though not suf- 
ficiently so to prevent them from being 
clothed with magnificent forests. Down 
this narrow valley a little stream runs, 
and about a quarter of a mile from the 
spot on which the convent stood, and the 
ruins stand, makes a series of cascades 
of every variety of form and position 
that can be conceived. All these falls, 
together with the crystalline pools in 
huge caldrons worn by the waters out 
of the rocks at their feet, were no doubt 
well known to the vassal fishermen who 
brought their tribute of trout to the con- 
vent larder. But the majority of the 
holy men themselves, I fancy, lived and 
died without seeing some of the falls, for 
they would be by no means easily ac- 
cessible without the assistance of the 
paths which by dint of long flights of 
steps, constructed of stones evidently 
brought from the ruins of the abbey, 
carry the visitor to every spot of vantage- 
ground most favorable for commanding 
a view of them. If, however, you have 
the advantage over the monks in this 
respect, your retreat will be less adapted 
to the purposes of retirement in another 
point of view. Ten or a dozen carriages 
a day filled with German tourists, all in 
high spirits and all very thirsty (" Thanks 
be !" says Herr Mittenmeyer), are not ap- 
propriate aids to the indulgence of con- 
templation. Scott advised his readers if 
they "would view fair Melrose aright, to 
visit it by the pale moonlight." And to 
those who would view Allerheiligen aright 
I would add the recommendation that the 
moon should be an October moon. The 
usual holiday - making months in Ger- 
many are by that time over. The pro- 
fessors have gone back to their chairs 
in the different universities ; the privat- 
docents have reopened their courses ; 
the substantial burghers have returned 
to their shops ; and the rat/is of all sorts 
and degrees have ensconced themselves 
once more behind their official desks, and 
have ceased to "babble of green fields " 



84 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



any more till this time twelvemonth. The 
tourists will have gone, and the autumnal 
colors will have come into the woods. 
There is much beech mixed with the pine 
in these forests, and the beech in October 
is as gorgeous a master of color as Rubens 
or Veronese. HerrMittenmeyer'smind, 
too, will have entered into a more placid 
and even - tempered phase. A stout, 
thickset man is Herr Mittenmeyer, with 
broad, rubicund face and short bull neck, 
of the type that suggests the possibility 
of an analogous shortness of temper un- 
der the pressure of being called in six 
different directions at once. Altogether, 
it is better in October. The song of the 
waterfall will not then be the only one 
making the woods melodious. There 
will be a fitful soughing of the wind in 
the forest. There will be a carpeting of 
dry, pale -brown oak -leaves on all the 
paths which "will make your steps vo- 
cal." Again and again, when slowly 
and musingly climbing the steep home- 
ward path up the valley in the dark 
hour, when the sun has set and before 
the moon has yet risen, you will fancy 
that you hear the tread among the leaves 
of a sandalled foot behind you. But it is 
well that the path leads you, for there is 
no more any vesper-bell flinging its sweet 
and welcome notes far and wide over hill 
and vale to guide the returning wanderer 
through the forest. 

Then the whole of this Black Fotest 
region is full of legends and traditional 
stories, which live longer and are more 
easily preserved among a people where 
the sons and the daughters live and mar- 
ry and die for the most part under the 
shadow of the same trees and the same 
thatch beneath which their fathers and 
mothers did the same. Of course, the 
Black Huntsman is as well known as 
of yore, though perhaps somewhat more 
rarely seen. But his habits and special- 
ties have become too well known to all 
readers of folk-lore to need any further 
notice. Less widely known histories, 
each the traditional subject of inglenook 
talk in its own valley, may be found at 
every step. There is a rather remark- 
able grotto or cavern in the hill above 
Allerheiligen, the main ridge which di- 



vides that valley from Achern and the 
Rhine. It is, you are told, the Edel- 
frauengrab (the "Noble Lady's Grave"). 
And you will be further informed, if you 
inquire aright, how that unhallowed spot 
came to be a noble lady's grave, and 
something more than a grave. 'Twas 
at the time of the Crusades — those mis- 
chief-making Crusades, which, among 
all the other evil which they produced, 
would have absolutely overwhelmed the 
divorce courts of those days with press 
of business if there had then been any 
divorce courts. This noble lady's lord 
went to the Crusades. How could a gal- 
lant knight and good Christian do aught 
else ? Of course he went to the Crusades ! 
And of course his noble lady felt extreme- 
ly dull and disconsolate during his ab- 
sence. What was she to do ? There 
was no circulating library ; and even if 
there had been, she would not have been 
able to avail herself of its resources, for, 
though tradition says nothing upon the 
subject, it may be very safely assumed 
that she could not read. And needle- 
work in the company of her maids must 
have become terribly wearisome after a 
time. She could go to mass, and to ves- 
pers also. Probably she did so at the 
new church of the recently - established 
community nestling in so charming a 
spot of the lovely valley beneath her. 
Let us hope that it was not there that 
she fell in with one whom in an hour 
of weakness she permitted to console her 
too tenderly for the absence of her cru- 
sading lord. Had she waited with pa- 
tience but only nine months longer for 
his return, all would have been well. 
For he did return as nearly as possible 
about that time ; and, arriving at his own 
castle-door, met one whom he at once 
recognized as his wife's confidential maid 
coming out of the house and carrying a 
large basket. The natural inquiry whith- 
er she was going, and what she had in 
her basket, was answered by the state- 
ment — uttered with that ingenuous fluen- 
cy and masterly readiness for which la- 
dies' maids have in all countries, and 
doubtless in all ages, been celebrated — 
that the basket contained a litter of pup- 
pies which she was taking to the river 



BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. 



85 



to drown. Alas ! the girl had adhered 
but too nearly to the truth. There were 
seven living and breathing creatures in 
the basket, and the confidential maid 
had been sent on the very confidential 
errand of drowning them. Woe worth 
the day ! They were seven little un- 
christened Christians, doomed to die one 
death as they had been born at one birth 
— the result of that erring noble lady's 
fault. The methods of injured husbands 
were wont to be characterized by much 
simplicity and directness of purpose in 
those days. The noble crusader invoked 
the aid of no court, either spiritual or lay. 
He happened to remember the existence 
of a certain dismal cavern in the sand- 
stone rock not far from his dwelling. 
The entrance to it was very easily wall- 
ed up. That cavern became the noble 
lady's prison and deathbed, as well as 
her grave ! And a valuable possession 
has that lady's death and grave become 
to the descendants of her lord's vassals, 
for many a gulden is earned by guiding 
the curious to see the spot and by retail- 
ing the tragic history. 



Well ! and of the two changes,- the two 
abolitions, which have been here record- 
ed, which was the most needed, which 
the most salutary, which the least min- 
gled in its results with elements of evil? 
Poor Baden piteously complains that it 
does not take half the money in the 
course of the year that it used to receive 
as surely as " the season " came round in 
the old times. And the poor, wholly un- 
converted by maxims of political econ- 
omy, declare that there have been no 
good times in the land since the destruc- 
tion of the monasteries. After all, Ab- 
bot Fischer (that was the name of the 
last of the long line) and his monks were 
less objectionable than M. Benazet and 
his croupiers. Could we perhaps keep 
the scales even and make things plea- 
sant all round by re-establishing both 
the abolished institutions — restoring the 
croupiers and "makers of the game" to 
their green table, and requiring them out 
of their enormous gains to re-endow the 
convent ? " C'est une idee, comme une 
autre !" as a Frenchman says, 

T, Adolphus Trollope. 










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WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



PART I. 




THE RUE DE RIVOLI AND THE TOUR ST. JACQUES. 



" A LL roads lead to Paris," said the 
■L\- wise and witty Doudan : "it is the 
Rome of the new era." I will not offend 
my readers by repeating a native witti- 
cism which has become a proverb. Amer- 
86 



icans — good and bad — are not the only 
foreigners who congregate in Paris. Pa- 
ris was the first stage in the grand tour 
of the last century ; French comedies and 
caricatures of fifty years ago abound in 



WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



representations of the English ; some of 
the noblest names of Great Britain are 
now more identified with Paris than with 
London. The Irish Jacobites who emi- 
grated in a body after the triumph of 
William of Orange were soon incorpo- 
rated into the French Legitimist society. 
That which now stands for the court of 
Poland has its seat in Paris : the Hotel 
Lambert is occupied by the Czartoryskis, 
who represent the extinct royalty in vir- 
tue of their descent from kings of Poland 
of their own name and from the Sapie- 
has, who also sat upon that rickety throne. 
They form a centre for the Polish society 
of Paris, amidst which they preserve a 
semblance of regal dignity and the eti- 
quette of a court, reproducing the Stuart 
court at St. Germains in the seventeenth 
century. There is also a high Spanish 
society, with Queen Isabella at its head. 
Much foreign royalty finds a home and 
holds a certain state there. The emperor 
Julian the Apostate liked Paris because 
it was quiet : it may be doubted whether 
many people have resorted to it since his 
time for that reason, yet it draws and 
holds the grave as well as the gay. Cho- 
pin went thither on a visit, and remain- 
ed there for ever after : it was a joke of 
his to the last that he was merely pass- 
ing through Paris. Heine found him- 
self moored there for life : his yearnings 
for the Fatherland always produced a 
reaction toward France. In his night 
thoughts sleepless fancy brings before 
him the oaks and lindens of Germany 
♦ and his old mother, whom he has not 
seen for ten years ; but it ends — 

Thank Heaven ! through my window streams 
The Frankish sun with gladsome beams : 
Here comes my wife, as fresh as day. 
To laugh my German griefs away. 

It is hard to say wherein this univer- 
sal charm lies. Paris is the least cos- 
mopolitan of great cities — she is only 
French : the complaint of the nation 
has been that Paris stands for the whole 
country, whereas there is much of France 
which is not Parisian, much of it which 
shows the influence of Paris less than 
some circles of American society did ten 
years ago (just now they take their tone 
from Marlborough House and Sandring- 



ham). Yet, though it is true that Paris is 
not all France, she is French, essentially 
French ; and there must be something in 
the nature of her inhabitants which offers 
points of sympathy to the variety of na- 
tions and dispositions gathered together 
there. There is extreme diversity in the 
range of French character, which may 
easily be observed in the difference of 
their public men, the reserved scholarly 
type being as distinct as the theatrical or 
the satirical. Notwithstanding a prone- 
ness to violence in the national temper- 
ament, which breaks out in times and in 
ways at which all Christendom stands 
aghast, and other tendencies peculiar- 
ly repugnant to the Anglo - Saxon, the 
French possess qualities which raise 
their standard to a higher level than 
that of their decorous neighbors. The 
notions of honor and glory which have 
been turned into a scoff by people in- 
capable of understanding the ideal are 
familiar to them from the cradle : such 
seed, falling on good soil, brings forth 
flowers of chivalry like Larochejacquelin 
and some of the men who fought for us a 
hundred years ago. But there are home- 
lier virtues which the French practise 
more assiduously than any other people 
— thrift, for instance. There is nothing 
which strikes us open-handed, over-care- 
less Americans more disagreeably on go- 
ing abroad than the perpetual wrangle 
over candle-ends and cheese -parings, 
farthings and halfpence. I am not speak- 
ing now of the customary fleecing of for- 
eigners and travellers, but of the habit- 
ual economy ; and the form which this 
takes in England is what we call "mean- 
ness " — a parsimony which, besides 
pinching itself, makes use of every small 
and shabby trick for saving at the ex- 
pense of others. In Germany also this 
necessity, though more self-respecting, 
has a sordid aspect. In Italy it gayly 
sacrifices the necessaries of life to the 
luxuries, and induces the majority of 
the middle class, and not a few of the 
nobility, to stint themselves in food and 
fuel for the sake of opera -tickets, an 
afternoon drive, a hohday suit of clothes 
— not from ostentation, but from a prefer- 
ence for what is amusing- to what is sub- 



JVJ/y BO WE LIKE PARIS? 



stantial. But in France the sense of or- 
der and fitness is perpetually gratified by 
the proportion and relation preserved be- 
tween people's means and their lives ; 
by the unusual neatness and grace with 



which even poverty can be invested ; by 
the cheerftilness with which lifelong toil 
and a hard lot are borne ; by the spirit 
and good sense which season much work 
with a little play. Courtesy of the finest 




kind is an almost invariable rule, in spite 
of threadbare stories of Frenchmen who 
take the wing of a chicken and the best 
seat in the railway - carriage : the Eng- 
lishman or German who will not take 
the whole chicken or the only seat is the 



exception. The American criterion of 
good-nature and good manners must not 
be carried across the Atlantic. Another 
hackneyed reproach against the French 
which we have taken up from the Eng- 
lish is, that they have no home-life, be- 



IVJIV no WE LIKE PARIS? 



cause they live on flats and eat at res- 
taurants. The reply is now almost as 
familiar as the accusation, yet it must 
be repeated as long as the accusation is 
brought : The family tie is a warmer and 
closer bond in France than in England, 
or even with us ; the grandfather or 
grandmother is the cherished and re- 
vered centre of a circle which often in- 
cludes a bachelor uncle or spinster cou- 
sin ; and cold pudding for poor relations 
is unknown. There is a sort of unself- 
ishness practised among all classes in 
France of which we have very little 
knowledge : it is a common act for a sis- 
ter to renounce her share of the parental 
inheritance to give a brother the means 
of starting in life, or for several members 
of a family to unite in the same sacrifice 
to make up a sister's dower : this gene- 
rally implies for all but the chosen one 
straitened means and single lives — for 
women often a convent — while that one, 
if a man, becomes in return the stay and 
support of the rest; if a woman, their good 
angel. A comparison of the virtues of the 
Latin and other races might explain much 
of the charm of Latin countries. These 
amiable qualities, although unknown to 
the greater number of strangers who fre- 
quent Paris, or denied by them, help to 
produce that agreeable temperature of 
cheerfulness and satisfaction which goes 
for a great deal in one's enjoyment of 
a place. But the positive resources for 
tastes of every sort are inexhaustiblg;___ 
To begin with, there is scarcely a pur- 
suit, whether serious or frivolous, which 
may not be followed to greater advantage 
in Paris than in any other European city. 
There is not such an accumulation of 
amusements as in London during the 
season, but, on the other hand, there 
is no dead season in Paris, as in almost 
all other capitals. The great galleries 
are open the whole year round, and so, 
practically, are the theatres and opera- 
houses, for their short vacations do not 
occur simultaneously : good music and 
acting are always to be found. The 
rush of social gayety is over before the 
spring exhibition of paintings opens; 
there is no custom among the richer 
people of leaving town in a body, such 



as prevails in London and our great 
cities, so that Paris never wears a dreary, 
deserted aspect ; the display in the shop- 
windows does not lose its sheen, nor the 
Champs Elysees their life, nor the Bois 
de Boulogne its fashion, at any time of 
year. Most people like a place the out- 
ward aspect of which puts them in good 
spirits. 

This feature of Paris must have been 
less prominent before the reign of Na- 
poleon 111. and M. Haussmann. Those 
who love the architectural expression of 
what is venerable, picturesque and en- 
crusted with historical associations watch- 
ed the progress of their improvements 
with grief. It was curious to observe as 
the emperor's popularity declined how 
the tone of the people and the press 
changed in regard to this magnificent 
clearing out. At first it was spoken of 
as the "embellishments," then as the 
"alterations," then as the "demolition:" 
an illustrated paper constantly published 
woodcuts of buildings which were disap- 
pearing under the title of " Paris qui s'en 
va." It was natural that many Parisians 
should bewail the destruction of so much 
thatwas old and beautiful, and that many 
visitors like myself should have mourned 
to find the goal of a pilgrimage only the 
site of a former shrine. But the grand 
avenue beginning at the beautiful old 
church of St. Germains I'Auxerrois, em- 
bracing the palace and courts of the 
Louvre, the palace, pavilions and gar- 
dens of the Tuileries, the Place de la 
Concorde with its fountains and obelisk, 
the festive Champs filysees, all sunshine 
and leafy shade, is worth a great many 
old bits and odd corners. Let us re- 
member, too, that the immense life of 
a million and a half of inhabitants and 
the incalculable currents of travel were 
forced into those narrow, crooked streets, 
blind alleys, dark passages, and we shall 
admit the need of the straight channels 
and the open thoroughfares. The mod- 
ernization of ancient and picturesque cities 
is a constant and natural subject of lam- 
entation, but modern life requires modern 
accommodation : it is impossible that the 
capital of Austria or Italy in the nine- 
teenth century should remain as it was 



9° 



WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



in the Middle Ages. Paris, as was in- 
evitable, has changed far more than Vi- 
enna, far more than the Eternal City will 
ever change, let us hope, but she is not 
bereft of all her ancient ornaments. If 
we are most interest- 
ed by the far past, as 
the citizens of a new 
country are apt to be, 
let us begin by look- 
ing around at some 
of the relics which 
still remain, without 
departing from the 
beaten track. 

No street is so in- 
separably connected 
with the modern 
and American idea 
of Paris as the Rue 
de Rivoli, a broad, 
light -colored vista 
of hotels, handsome 
houses and spark- 
ling shop-windows : 
following it to the 
end, we come to the 
Tour St. Jacques, a 
fine fragment of late 
Gothic rising nearly 
two hundred feet 
from the pavement, 
like a steep rock 
from a plain. It is 
the last vestige of a 
church begun under 
Louis XII., finished 
in the palmy days of 
Francis I. and de- 
molished by the mob 
in 1789. Under the 
pointed arch of the 
lowest story stands a 
statue of Pascal, who 
made some of his 
philosophical exper- 
iments in this tower. 
From its s u m m i t , 

once crowned by a lovely spire, there is 
a magnificent view of Paris. From that 
height the Seine seems to flow almost at 
our feet, dividing around the island on 
which stands Notre Dame, whose mighty 
towers are close over against us. We look 



down into thelittle, narrow streets near the 
cathedral, and they swarm with shadowy 
historical figures, but the personages of 
Victor Hugo's novel Notre Dame de Paris 
— or, as we call it, The Hunchback of 




THE STE. CHAPELLE. 

Notre Dame — drive out the real and 
rightful ghosts. . It is a handbook for 
this part of Paris, in- which one may 
find the city restored as it was three 
centuries ago and as great part of it re- 
mained until recent times. The island 



IV//V no WE LIKE PARIS? 



91 



seems one to us looking down, but it is 
several islets pieced together and bridged 
across. ' Still gazing from the Tour St. 
Jacques, we see with a shudder how hard- 
ly the exquisite Ste. Chapelle escaped the 
flames of the Commune : when the fire 
had all but reached the walls it stopped 
as if by a miracle, and this gem of early 
florid architecture survived. A special 
providence watches over this little church, 
small in comparison with its great neigh- 
bor. It was built by the royal St. Louis 
to receive relics of peculiar sacredness 
from Palestine, part of the true cross and 
the crown of thorns. The two octagonal 
towers are encircled halfway up by a 
crown of thorns in stone : the same fan- 
cy has carved and bristled the pinnacles 
with little spikes which mingle with the 
foliage of the crockets and produce a 
luxuriant decoration. In 1618 the Ste. 
Chapelle was endangered by a fire which 
destroyed one of the finest halls of the 
adjacent Palais de Justice ; twelve years 
later its own beautiful spire was burnt, 
and not replaced until 1853 ; in 1776 all 
the buildings actually adjoining it were 
consumed; in 1781 the conflagration 
raged about it, sweeping away monu- 
ments and mementos of every period, 
but sparing the splendid reliquary : the 
jewel-like glass of the windows, coeval 
with the church, escaped the fury of the 
Revolution. The church has been re- 
stored with extreme care from remains 
of the "old wood - carving, frescoes and 
sculpture, so that we look upon its beau- 
ties as they delighted the devout heart of 
its royal founder on the eve of departure 
for his first ill-starred crusade,.JjNotwith- 
standing the flaws in his character, Louis 
IX., like St. Elizabeth of Hungary, is one 
of those mediseval physiognomies whose 
enthusiasm and childlike simplicity, un- 
spotted through life, make us forget their 
shortcomings : in those days the great of 
the earth, whatever their faults, had often 
an unworldliness which imparts a sin- 
gular purity and luminousness to their 
memory. 

The island well illustrates how crowd- 
ed every rood of the old city is with 
places of interest. In this small space 
alone there are the cathedral, the Ste. 



Chapelle, the Palais de Justice, the 
church of St. Louis en I'lle — a small 
church built in 1664, but interesting 
from its connection with the University 
of Paris ; the Hotel Dieu, the most an- 
cient hospital in Paris, the origin of 
which dates from Merovingian times ; 
the " Hotel Lambert, a lordly mansion 
which appears in the memoirs of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
and now, by the occupancy of the Czar- 
toryskis, represents the court of Poland; 
the Conciergerie. Many of the oldest 
edifices are built over still more vener- 
able ones, of which the foundations and 
other portions are still visible : many 
contain smaller independent structures, 
like the ancient church of St. Julien des 
Pauvres within the precincts of the Hotel 
Dieu. Paris may be studied like a huge 
palimpsest in stone and mortar, where 
beneath the new is something old, and 
beneath the old something older. The 
superb brand - new Tribunal de Com- 
merce is a case in point : between the 
antique piles of the Palais de Justice and 
the Hotel Dieu its modern Corinthian 
architecture is strikingly out of place. 
The grandiose, heavily-handsome stair- 
case and cupola and the Cour d'Honneur, 
built like the court of an Italian palace 
of the Renaissance, have neither state- 
liness nor meaning in their present po- 
sition : the building belongs to the new 
quarters, to the city of Napoleon III. and 
M. Haussmann ; but it stands on the site 
of a Roman prison and of the medieval 
church and convent of St. Bartholomew. 
There never were such people as the 
French for literally tearing themselves 
to pieces. Between Notre Dame and the 
river, where there are an open walk and 
a modern fountain, stood not fifty years 
ago the splendid palace of the archbish- 
ops of Paris, rich with the ecclesiastical 
treasures of seven centuries. During the 
political disturbances which attended the 
accession of Louis Philippe the palace 
was sacked by the mob, headed, it is 
said, by officers of the National Guard : 
everything in it was broken, stolen or 
thrown into the river, and the building 
itself was so nearly destroyed that it 
could not be rebuilt. The archbishop 



92 



IVI/y DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



of that time, Monseigneur de Quelen, a 
man eminent for piety, courage and ev- 
ery other virtue, twice narrowly escaped 
death at the hands of that most awful of 
all mobs, the mob of Paris, who were 
clamoring for his head on the strength of 
absurd reports of arms and ammunition 



concealed in the vaults of Notre Dame. 
His life was shortened by these agitations 
and revulsions of feeling. Within the 
last hundred years four archbishops of 
Paris have died a violent death, begin- 
ning with the unworthy Gobel, who was 
guillotined in 1794. They have been a 




line of martyrs ; Mgr. de Quelen was a 
martyr in all but the mere fact ; Mgr. 
Afifre fell in attempting to persuade the 
insurgents of the Faubourg St. Antoine 
to disperse in the revolution of 1848 : he 
was shot on the barricade with words of 
peace on his lips and the olive-branch in 



his hand. He had put aside entreaties and 
warnings with the words, " The Good 
Shepherd gives his life for the sheep :" 
his dying ejaculation was, " May my 
blood be the last to be shed !" His 
successor, Mgr. Sibour, was assassinated 
by a renegade priest in 1857 as he was 



tV//¥ DO WE LIKE PARIS P 



93 



performing the great annual service in 
honor of Ste. Genevieve, the patroness of 
Paris. The blood of the last archbishop, 
Mgr. Darboy, is scarcely dry in the ditch 
of the Grande Roquette, where he was 
shot by the Communists in May, 1871. 
The humblest missionary to African sav- 
ages is in less danger than these magnif- 




PORTE ROUGE, NOTRE DAME. 

icent prelates. We do not like Paris so 
much when we think of all the blood that 
has been shed here : the blood-stains of 
the Commune are still fresh, and, go- 
ing back as far as we can, we find the 
damned spot everywhere. One of the 
most beautiful bits of Notre Dame is the 
Porte Rouge on the north side, which 
may be translated the "Door of Blood," 
and which was built by John the Fearless, 
duke of Burgundy, in expiation of the 
murder of the duke of Orleans in 1407. 
The valor and other princely qualities 
of Jean sans Peur and the odious cha- 
racter of his victim, who was the very 
curse of France, bias us in favor of the 
former notwithstanding the treachery of 
his deed. Their enmity had been bitter 
and of long standing, but they met for 



formal and public reconcihation, attend- 
ed mass and received 'the sacrament to- 
gether, and ended the day by a banquet. 
On his way home the duke of Orleans 
was surrounded and assassinated : the 
story goes that one wrapped in a mantle 
and scarlet hood, so as to conceal his 
face and figure, suddenly came out of a 
house and struck the final, fatal blow, 
and that this was the duke of Burgundy. 
The duke of Orleans had offered him an 
unpardonable insult by placing the like- 
ness of the duchess of Burgundy among 
the portraits of his mistresses. It is fur- 
ther said that the duke of Burgundy had 
received intelligence of a plot to assas- 
sinate himself, and merely got the start 
of his foe. His atonement was splendid, 
according to the notions of those times. 
About ten years afterward he paid the 
natural penalty of his great crime, and 
was slain in his turn on the bridge of 
Montereau during a parley with the dau- 
phin, afterward Charles VII. His tomb 
is at Dijon, the place of his birth, beside 
that of his father, Philippe le Hardi ; his 
duchess Margaret lies by his side coronet- 
ed and in daisy-sprinkled robe ; around 
the base of the monument troops of little 
monks mourn the death of their prince 
with every demonstration of grief. But 
under the rich Gothic canopy which forms 
the porch of the Porte Rouge the duke 
and duchess of Burgundy kneel in per- 
petual repentance amid a crowd of divine 
and sacred figures. 

The combination of richness in detail 
and simplicity of general plan is the cha- 
racteristic beauty of Notre Dame. The 
eye comprehends its grand proportions 
at the first glance : it is pervaded by a 
sublime repose which is undisturbed by 
the prodigality of sculpture on the triple 
portal, the flying buttresses, the rose- 
windows, the three galleries. Pointed 
Gothic cannot go further in the union 
of majesty and grace. 

Even amid these magnificent land- 
marks of the old French monarchy the 
imagination of a traveller, tracing the 
footprints of history, is preoccupied by 
recollections of the First Revolution. His 
path is constantly crossing the seared, 
ensanguined track. In 1872 the marks 



94 



fVBV DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



of the Commune hardly seemed fresher 
than those of 1792. Here, in the island, 
the round turrets of the Conciergerie, 
flanking its arched gateway facing the 
river and seen from the opposite quay, 
divide our thoughts with the Gothic mag- 
nificence, with the holy, heroic, fierce, ro- 
mantic traditions of earlier times. The 
Conciergerie was a dungeon ages ago, 
when the Palais de Justice was a royal 
residence : it had its terrors, its exe- 
cutions, its oubliettes ; but it is as the 
prison of the Revolution that it keeps 
its horrible fame. Nor is it only that 
the Conciergerie was the prison, but 
the prison of the doomed — one huge 
condemned cell. Here the Girondists 
supped together on the night before 
their execution with jest and song and 
speech, with some show of theatrical 
bravado, with noble acts of real cour- 
age, like Vergniaud's throwing away 
the poison of which there was not 
enough for his friends : hither came 
Charlotte Corday and Madame Ro- 
land from the Abbey, Marie Antoi- 
nette from the Temple, the Jacobins 
from the Luxembourg — one last jour- 
ney more for them all. These went 
forth to death, but hundreds were per- 
fidiously discharged and sent back to 
life, to meet a more appalling fate at 
the gates by the hands of the mob. 
Twice the apartment in which Marie 
Antoinette spent her last two months 
on earth has been consecrated to her 
memory by paintings, inscriptions, rel- 
ics : they were torn out and dispersed 
in 1830; it was again restored and re- 
stocked during the Second Empire, when 
the empress Eugenie had set a fashion of 
enthusiasm for the unfortunate queen ; 
but it was again pillaged by the fury of 
the Commune, and the very cell itself 
destroyed in May, 1871. 

There are occasional exhibitions of 
ferocity in the lives of individuals and 
nations on which it is wise not to dwell 
if we wish to keep our faith in human 
nature. It is better to leave the island 
and its still unvisited curiosities and cross 
to the left bank of the Seine. This is the 
Rive Gauche, which many think the most 
interesting and agreeable part of Paris, 



and where they find the best reasons for 
a sojourn there. The quays are the fa- 
vorite haunt of bric-a-brac lovers, collec- 
tors of old books and rare engravings. 
New books too may be bought at the sec- 
ond-hand stalls for a song : I have seen 
a complete edition of Sainte-Beuve, near 
forty volumes, as fresh as if just from Ha- 
chette's shop, for something between fif- 
teen and sixteen dollars. The Pont St. 




CHAPEL OF THE HOTEL DE CLUNY. 

Michel leads from the island to the Latin 
Quarter, so well known to students, espe- 
cially students of medicine. It is a lab- 
yrinth of streets with learned names, the 
Rue Gerson, Rue Amyot, Rue Descartes, 
Rue Laplace : the stranger expects ser- 
mons from their stones and supposes 
every house to be an abode of learning. 
Here are the Sorbonne, or theological 
seminary, the College de France, the 
Ecole Polytechnique, the Ecole Nor- 
mal e, while colleges and lycees by the 
score shoulder one another. But this 
scholastic realm is the centre of the vie 
de Boheme, that country without con- 
fines, the land of the prodigal and ne'er- 



WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



95 



do-weel, where many a sober citizen, 
many a member of the learned profes- 
sions in the Old and New Worlds, have 
sowed their wild oats, and some have 
made them into pipes and blown blithe- 
ly and tunefully thereupon. Victor Hugo 
is cicerone for the lie de la Cite, and to 
Henri Murger belongs the Pays Latin, 
with its larks, its devil-may-care laugh- 
ter, its wit, poetry, pathos, its transient 
yet sometimes tragic loves, its harrowing 
and horrible destinies. Parisians assert 
that there is no longer such a life, such 
a country ; that it has been divided like 
Poland and its autonomy destroyed ; that 
Murger's and Mussel's novels are tales 
from ancient history. If this be true, so 
much the better : idleness, improvidence 
and vice are less dangerous when they 
do not wear sentimental faces and as- 
sume idyllic attitudes. For one man who 
came scot-free out of the ordeal, how 
many left health, happiness, wholesome 
habits behind them ! The preface to 
Murger's Vie de Bohhne and Musset's 
Frederic et Beriierette are the best hom- 
ilies on the subject — Murger's own sad 
story the best moral. 

The outward aspect of the quarter, al- 
though not new, is prosaic enough until 
suddenly we come upon a Gothic gate- 
way in an old wall ; and here are the an- 
cient Lutetia and mediaeval Paris again. 
It is the entrance to the Hotel de Cluny, 
a noble specimen of fifteenth-century do- 
mestic architecture. It may be called the 
city palace of the abbots of Cluny, as 
Lambeth is the London house of the 
archbishops of Canterbury. Down in 
Burgundy, on the quiet banks of the 
Saone, stand the magnificent ruins of 
the abbey of Cluny, founded in the soli- 
tude by a duke of Aquitaine in 920. 
It rose rapidly in importance and in- 
fluence, and the abbot became one of 
the great ecclesiastical powers of Europe. 
About a hundred years from its founda- 
tion, Hildebrand — afterward the great 
pope Gregory VII. — retired thither to 
find a stricter rule of life than in his 
convent at Rome. In another hundred 
years the post of abbot was filled by Peter 
the Venerable, an erudite, generous, zeal- 
ous man, a prominent Church politician. 



He accomplished a great work for the ab- 
bey, reforming its loosened manners and 
relaxed rule, obtaining valuable privi- 
leges and strengthening its prerogatives 
by the favor of kings and popes. All this 
makes no difference now to any human 
being alive, but Peter the Venerable is 
remembered as the friend of Abelard 
and Heloise, the most famous pair of 
lovers the world has ever known. He 
gave shelter and sympathy to Abelard 
when that thrice-unhappy man was si- 
lenced, banished and threatened with 
excommunication for his independent 
thinking and speaking. The compas- 
sion of Peter the Venerable survives with 
the sorrows of Heloise and Abelard : the 
tears which he shed over the recital of 
their misfortunes, his letter of condo- 
lence to Heloise on Abelard's death, his 
tenderness for the latter's memory, are 
preserved in the heavy, correct, unclas- 
sical tomes of the Bibliotheca Veierum 
Patrimt, where few people will look for 
them ; but everybody may see the beau- 
tiful tomb in the cemetery of Pere la 
Chaise at Paris which was made by 
Peter's order for Abelard. Modern lov- 
ers still make sentimental journeys to 
the tomb : it is covered with wreaths on 
All Souls' Day — most of them, sad to 
say, crowns of everlasting flowers or still 
more frightful ones of black and white 
beads. After Peter's death the abbey 
continued to flourish until it became 
the head of nearly two thousand religious 
houses and had a revenue of sixty thou- 
sand dollars a year. No wonder that the 
abbot required a town-house at the cap- 
ital for greater convenience in looking 
after so many interests, temporal and 
spiritual ; and toward the close of the fif- 
teenth century this stately palace arose. 
It was far from being dedicated exclu- 
sively to clerical use, however. Soon 
after it was finished, Mary Tudor, the 
sister of Henry VIII. of England, lived 
here while widow of Louis XII. of France, 
previous to her marriage to Brandon, duke 
of Suffolk — the unromantic heroine of a 
romantic love-story. Her bedroom bears 
the pretty but misleading title of " Cham- 
bre de la Reine blanche," in allusion to 
the white mourning which the queens of 



96 



WHY DO WE LIKE PARTS? 



France wore as weeds. Here too James 
V. of Scotland, superfine, poetical, chiv- 
alrous, ill-fated personage, was married 
to Madeleine, the daughter of Francis 1. 
Later, the Guises made a stronghold of 



the place : it served as a refuge of the 
doves of Port Royal and their abbess ; 
as the barracks of a company of actors ; 
as the head - quarters of Marat in '93, 
until Charlotte Corday's knife stopped 




INTERIOR OF STE. GENEVIEVE (THE PANTHEON). 



the murderous business which was doing 
there. Its late purpose, horrible as it is 
to remember, probably saved the Hotel 
de Cluny from the destruction which 
overtook the mother - house. On the 
banks of the Saone two ruined towers 
and a dilapidated wall are all that re- 
main of the glorious abbey of Cluny ; 



but the hotel was spared by the sans-cu- 
lottes, and its regeneration after Marat's 
occupancy began by its being used in 
part as a stable, in part as a cooper's shop 
and for similar harmless purposes. At 
length it was bought by the accomplish- 
ed and enthusiastic M. de Sommerard, 
author of Les Arts' au Moyen Age, to 



WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



97 



receive his collection of historical spe- 
cimens and relics of the early arts in 
France. The government bought it of 
his heirs in 1843, ^^''d keeps it as a mu- 
seum of national antiquities. The lofty 
rooms with muUioned windows are filled 
with splendid old furniture, tapestry, lace, 
pottery, armor, weapons, trinkets and 
curiosities too various to classify. They 
are haunted by students and connois- 
seurs of bric-a-brac ; by artists making 
sketches of the gorgeous Arras and 
Gobelin hangings or of those magnifi- 
cent carved and sculptured mantel- 
pieces which figure in so many water- 
color drawings and on so many can- 
vases ' by actors careful of accuracy in 
the costume of an historical part ; but 
most of all by lovers of the past and the 
picturesque. It is a grand old curiosity- 
shop. One of the strangest relics in the 
collection is a set of crowns belonging to 
the Gothic period in Spain : they consist 
of a king's, a queen's, and those of six roy- 
al infants : any well-read child will imme- 
diately remember Hop-o'-my-Thumb's 
host, the ogre, in whose family a crown 
was also an indispensable article of attire. 

The gem of the building is a chapel 
adjoining the apartment of Mary Tudor: 
its vaulted roof is supported by a single 
slender, octagonal column ; the fan-tra- 
cery of the roof is filled in with a pro- 
fusion of delicate leafage ; the lectern, 
credence and other pieces of church fur- 
niture are carved in the most elaborate 
manner; the walls are enriched with 
Gothic niches of exquisite form and de- 
sign : grace and elegance control the pro- 
portions and decorations, yet the whole 
effect is cold and depressing. A church 
in which men no longer worship can no 
more retain its aspect of a sanctuary than 
an uninhabited house the atmosphere of 
a home ; arm-chairs, tables, sofas, chairs, 
books, writing-materials cannot preserve 
an apartment from the mildew of deser- 
tion which overspreads it when human 
life no longer abides there ; and so, in 
spite of the altar and its appointments, 
the Divine Presence seems to depart from 
the temple no longer warmed by prayer 
and praise. 

From the chapel a winding stone stair- 
7 



case leads down to the older building, 
the palace of. the emperor Julian and of 
the Merovingian and Carlovingian kings 
— the Palais des Thermes, as it is called, 
nothing but the great Roman bathing- 
establishment being left. The principal 
chamber is a vast vaulted hall, with walls 
as thick as a fortress, which has been con- 
verted into a museum of Roman antiqui- 
ties. This opens upon a little grassy area, 
as quiet, trim and green as a convent-gar- 
den, which is also filled with fragments 
of sculpture. It is a common practice 
abroad to convert the waste spaces in 
and about fine ruins into gardens, and 
the charm of these spots is indescribable. 
One sits on the capital of a fallen pillar 
or the head of a gargoyle imbedded in 
close -shorn turf, with brilliant, formal 
flower-beds on every side like the trays 
of a jewel-case ; the lights and shadows 
of the greenery overhead waver on gray 
crumbling battlements or sculptured tra- 
cery ; and whether a vision of old build- 
ers and denizens fills the place, or noth- 
ing moves except the silently-shifting sun- 
light and the birds which hop and peek, 
the moments glide away like flowing wa- 
ter in these retreats where time has come 
to a stop. The longer we stay the harder 
it is to get up and go away, and many an 
hour slips by in this tranquil enclosure, 
which contains an epitome of the history 
of Paris, and the foot lingers as we pass 
through the old Gothic monastery-porch, 
which lets us through to the Hotel Cluny 
and out into the streets of modern Paris 
again. It was by another of those hair- 
breadth escapes which saved the Ste. 
Chapelle that these precious monuments 
and treasures missed being blown to at- 
oms in 1 87 1. It was a question of hours : 
the vaults of the neighboring Pantheon 
were full of gunpowder, but the troops 
got possession of the building before the 
Communists could explode their mines, 
or the whole quarter, with its hoards of 
antiquities, art, books, manuscripts, scien- 
tific apparatus, military trophies — all that 
piety, learning, valor, taste, intelligent in- 
dustry, patriotism, delight in — would have 
been reduced to a heap of rubbish. 

The Pantheon looks as modern as any 
building in Paris, and it is as difficult to' 



WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



admire its eighteenth - century Renais- 
sance as the eighteenth -century Corin- 
thian of the Madeleine. The original 
church was built by Clovis early in the 
sixth century at the instance of his queen, 
Clotilde, through whom he was convert- 
ed to Christianity, and of Ste. Genevieve, 
the gentle shepherdess and patron saint 
of Paris. It was first dedicated to Sts. 
Peter and Paul, but on Ste. Genevieve's 
death she was buried there and the church 
renamed in her honor. Nothing of stone 
and mortar lasts thirteen hundred years 
except ruins : even a church requires ren- 
ovation after a millennium. The first 
church of Ste. Genevieve was burned 
by the Northmen A. D. 857, and rebuilt ; 
in the last century it had to be rebuilt 
again ; and the present edifice was begun 
once more by command of a king, Louis 
XV., and at the request of a woman, 
Madame de Pompadour ! The chaste 
shades of Ste. Genevieve and Queen 
Clotilde probably fled before this unhal- 
lowed reconstruction, and there is noth- 
ing to call them back to the present fane, 
superb as it is in dimensions and decora- 
tion. One traveller at least must con- 
fess to finding neither edification nor en- 
joyment in the redundant modern statu- 
ary representing France and her peculiar 
virtues and attributes, her great repre- 



sentative men, her goddesses and genii, 
nor in the showy historical and allegor- 
ical paintings, although they are signed by 
the hands of Gros and Gerard. Every step 
that one takes suggests a sardonic reflec- 
tion. On the piers which support the dome 
are bronze tablets to those who fell in the 
revolution of 1830 : their monuments will 
endure longer than brass, for they are 
protected and entirely hidden by the 
wainscoting which has been placed over 
them. There is something ludicrous as 
well as hideous in the way in which each 
political party in France, as it gets the 
upper hand, flings the relics of its pre- 
decessor out of window, like a ghastly 
parody of Box and Cox's breakfast. The 
Revolution rushes in ; out goes the dust of 
saints and kings, that philosophers, athe- 
ists and sans -culottes may be solemnly 
entombed in their stead : back comes 
authority, albeit a National Convention ; 
away with the bones of Voltaire, Rous- 
seau, Mirabeau, Marat, the last — who 
can wonder? — to the common sewer: 
royalty returns and scrapes together its 
scattered ashes and restores the broken 
noses of its effigies ; the Commune comes 
and blows everything to indiscriminate 
sherds. These parallels obtrude them- 
selves too pertinaciously at the Pantheon. 




IVHV DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



99 



WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 

CONCLUDING PART. 




PALACE OF THK LUXEMBOURG. 



LET us go on to the palace of the Lux- 
embourg, which is close at hand; 
not without painful memories, it is true — 
where in Paris, where on earth, can one 
escape them? — but with pleasant ones 
too, and a host of agreeable suggestions 
and recollections. On this ground in the 



sixteenth century stood the handsome 
house and gardens of Harlay-Sancy, a 
great political and financial personage 
in those days. After passing through the 
hands of a duke d'Epinay-Luxembourg, 
who gave the habitation his name, which 
it has kept in spite of half a dozen other 



lOO 



WJiy DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



appellations, it was bought by Marie de 
Medicis when queen-regent. In mem- 
ory of her home she caused a palace to 
be constructed on the model of the Pitti 
Palace at Florence, but, although the 
general plan and style of the two are 
alike, the Luxembourg is a poor repro- 
duction of its massive Italian prototype. 
Marie de Medicis bequeathed it to her 
son, Gaston of Orleans, and although the 
property frequently changed owners, 
it as constantly reverted to the Orleans 
family up to the time of the First Revo- 



lution. Then for a brief terrible time it 
was used as a prison. "Nightly come 
the Tumbrils to the Luxembourg with 
the fatal Roll-call — list of the batch of 
to-morrow. Men rush toward the gate ; 
listen if their name be in it. One deep- 
drawn breath when the name is not in : 
we live still one day-! And yet some 
score or scores of names were in. Quick 
there ! They clasp their loved ones to 
their heart one last time ; with brief 
adieu, wet-eyed or dry-eyed, they mount 
and are away. This night to the Con- 




THE PAVILLON DE FLORE OF THE TUILERIES. 



ciergerie ; through the Palais misnamed 
of Justice to the Guillotine to-morrow."* 
Government in the shape of the Direc- 
tory took its seat there, to be succeeded 
by the Consulate : then it became a par- 
liamentary building. Palace of the Sen- 
ate, the Chamber of Peers, Palace of the 
Senate again, according to the order or 
disorder of the day, until, on the destruc- 
tion of the Hotel de Ville in 187 1, it had to 
be appropriated to the Municipal Coun- 
cil and the offices of the department of 

* Carlyle's History of the French Revolution. 



the Seine, otherwise the municipality of 
Paris. 

On my first visit to the Luxembourg it 
was the wife of the prefect of the Seine 
for the nonce who graciously showed 
our party over the palace, which was 
not then open to the public. She was 
a trig little woman, with fine dark eyes, 
nice teeth and that charm of courtesy 
and readiness which does duty so often 
and so well in France for wit and beau- 
ty. The lively little lady considered her 
residence in the Luxembourg as exile, and 



IVJ/V DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



when we admired the spacious rooms, the 
really royal lodging, she shrugged her 
shoulders gracefully and assured us that 
her own hotel on the other side of the 
river was much more attractive. It might 
be more homelike and more in the taste 
of the present day, but the Luxembourg 



struck us as at once stately and cheerful 
— a very pleasant palace. The paintings 
and statues are by the best artists of the 
century, and there is a succession of pillar- 
ed halls with cupolas, of lofty, light saloons 
with painted ceilings profusely carved and 
gilded, of corridors and galleries lined 




TOMB OF NAPOLEON 1. 



with busts and statues — all bright and 
airy, not gloomy and dull like many 
monarchs' homes. Marie de Medicis's 
own suite of rooms is splendid and lux- 
urious, befitting a queen of France and 
daughter of the Italian Renaissance ; 
the furniture is gold and crimson vel- 
vet ; the pictures are by Poussin, Phi- 
lippe de Champagne and Rubens, who 
might be called her painter - laureate. 
There is a miserable contrast between 
her life here and her end in the dismal 
lodgings at Cologne. Adjoining the 
principal palace there is a small one — 
or more properly a hotel in the French 
acceptation of the word as a private 
house of some pretension — called Le 
Petit Luxembourg : it was built by Car- 
dinal Richelieu, and given to his niece, 
the duchess d'Aiguillon, one of the great 
ladies and great beauties of her time, 
and it was the scene of brilliant assem- 
blies and secret councils in that gay, ar- 
rogant, aristocratic life of Paris in which 
social frivolity and the momentous issues 
of the day were intermixed. Attached to 



this building there is a little cloister — part 
of a convent that disappeared long ago — 
which has been roofed over with glass 
and turned into a conservatory : it makes 
the most charming of winter - gardens, 
and a cool resort for summer evenings 
too, when its stone arches are open to 
the night air and the fountain plashes in 
the centre of the quadrangle. The Petit 
Luxembourg has its own private garden 
with fine old trees, and the feudal rural 
appendage of a dovecote. 

Our amiable conductress took leave 
of us after doing the honors of the pal- 
ace and its dependencies, and we found 
our way into the picture-gallery. It was 
originally formed by Louis XV. in 1750 
to exhibit paintings and other works of 
art which were packed away in the gar- 
rets of the Louvre and the cabinets of 
Versailles. But the number of these is 
not large, and the interest of the collec- 
tion, which is two -thirds modern, may 
be inferred from the fact that it is made 
up of recognized masterpieces. If I re- 
member rightly, the pictures have all 



IVHV no WE LIKE PARIS? 



taken a first prize at the annual exhibi- 
tion known as the Salon : they belong to 
the government, and are kept here dur- 
ing the artist's life, to be after his death 
eventually transferred to the Louvre, or, 
if their popularity does not stand the test 
of time, to be sent into honorable retire- 
ment in one of the provincial galleries. 
Here, then, we see the most celebrated 
canvases of the French contemporary 




FONTAINE MOLIERE. 

school. Among others are La Source, 
by Ingres, a cool, chaste nymph issuing 
from a rock : her lovely naked body has 
all the pearly freshness of dew ; the gray 
cliff and a garland of humid green make 
up a picture of exquisite purity and re- 
finement. Couture's Decadence covers 
an immense surface of wall : it shows 
the influence of the Venetian school, 
which first roused his genius in child- 
hood. It is an historical painting, typi- 
fying the decline of the Roman Empire 
by a huge orgy, steeped in sensuality, 
but not revolting : men and women with 
beautiful forms and faces press grapes 
into golden cups, scatter roses, recline 
on ivory couches and purple draperies, 
burn incense for the perfume, not for 



worship ; two philosophers stand apart 
smiling and moralizing; somewhere in 
the background, I think, a Christian is 
brought in. It is a theatrical, scenic pic- 
ture, of which this is but a skeleton de- 
scription. Hebert's Malarie depicts a 
boatload of Italian peasants slowly fall- 
ing down the imperceptible current of 
a stream which traverses the Pontine 
Marshes : the fever has laid its hot hand 
on their drooping heads, on the slug- 
gish stream, on its parched yellow 
banks, on the heavy air. It is a 
picture full of sentiment and mel- 
ancholy : the doom of a race is 
there. Regnault is the latest idol 
of the French artist and literary 
world : he was good, gifted, brave, 
handsome, young ; he threw away 
his life and his blossoming promise 
in the trenches at the siege of Paris; 
he was killed by the last volley the 
Prussians fired. The Luxembourg 
has two of his pictures — the eques- 
trian portrait of General Prim, a 
wonderfully strong, spirited per- 
formance, which shows the influ- 
ence of Velasquez and the noble 
Spanish school; the other is a 
ghastly Eastern execution. 

From the picture-gallery to the 
garden it is but a step — the beau- 
tiful, celebrated old garden, full of 
great chestnut trees and marbles 
and twittering birds. This is not a 
gay garden, a fashionable lounge, 
like the promenade of the Tuileries, with 
its orange trees in tubs before the Com- 
mune. It is a garden of bygone days, 
and a spirit of seclusion broods over 
the walks and groves, although they are 
not deserted. Studious youths from the 
benches of the neighboring colleges come 
here book in hand ; old soldiers from the 
asylums sun themselves on the terrace ; 
fond couples meet by stealth under the 
trees ; white - capped nurses gossip with 
each other while the children toddle and 
skip along the gravel. The grounds have 
been ruthlessly sliced and shaved by the 
new streets and boulevards, but even in 
their reduced condition they retain so 
much dignity and charm that their ob- 
literation, which is sometimes talked of. 



fVJIY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



103 



would rob one side of Paris of its chief 
beauty. 

The painters of the great pictures in 
the gallery of the Luxembourg are al- 
most without exception pupils of the 
Ecole des Beaux Arts. That famous 
school has its seat in a large modern 
building, a patchwork of relics and rem- 
iniscences of the most distant countries 
and ages : Grecian porticos of recent 



erection are clapped against sculptured 
Gothic walls of the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries ; scraps of the most ex- 
quisite French Renaissance, if so we may 
call that graceful and original style which 
Italian architects devised for the Valois 
kings, are intercalated with genuine an- 
tiques ; yet the external effect is fine and 
agreeable, and within the discrepancies 
belong to every academy of fine arts. 




LA MAISON DE MOLIERE. 



In the amphitheatre where the prizes 
are awarded is Delaroche's great com- 
position, as familiar in this country as 
te Europe by the engravings and pho- 
tographs which were at one time to be 
seen in every print-shop. I first made 
its acquaintance in this form with secret 
scepticism as to the merits of the orig- 
inal. It looks finely when seen in its 
right place, which is, after all, the true 
way to see every work of art, and it is 
a comprehensive muster of all the great 
— and many of the lesser — artists of the 
world. Their physiognomies may be ac- 
centuated to bring out their individual- 
ity, but that very fact enables one to pick 
out the faces like names in a directory. 
But the room of capital interest is that 
called the Gallery of Prizes, containing 
the works which have gained the grand 



prix de Rome, which entitles the suc- 
cessful competitor to a four years' sojourn 
in Rome, or, if he prefer it, to two years 
there and two of travel and study at the 
expense of the government. The whole 
work of the school is competitive : the 
pupil is expected to study alone ; at cer- 
tain intervals a session is held and a 
subject for illustration is given ; the stu- 
dents are required there and then to 
produce a study of it, whether in paint- 
ing, sculpture or architecture ; the best 
attempts are rewarded by an honorable 
mention or prizes of different degrees; 
once a year comes the great struggle for 
the prix de Rome ; the study which takes 
that prize remains in this hall. It is very 
curious to compare these first assertions 
of genius with the mature productions 
of the same hands : in many the divine 



104 



PVHY no WE LIKE PARIS? 



spark gleams unmistakably, in others by 
no less celebrated names we are forced 
to admire the sharpness of sight which 
could discern it. But how many of these 
efforts, some of them giving evidence of 
remarkable talent, are signed by names 
unknown to fame ! What becomes of all 
this promise ? What is the obscure and 
melancholy end of these disappointed 
hopes and ambitions, these unredeem- 
ed pledges ? The whole world knows the 
history of a Corot or a Meissonier, but 
who were the candidates of the year 
before or the year after ? If they died 
young, the gods loved them, and it, is 
well ; but if they have lived, where and 
what are they now ? 

From the Palais des Beaux Arts we turn 
out upon the quays, and the river -view 
bursts upon the sight. Up the stream are 
the towers of Notre Dame, downward the 
bridges in close succession, until the curv- 
ing channel brings the trees of the two 
banks together. Opposite are the Louvre, 
the Tuileries — the Tuileries, alas ! no 
more — the ruins of the beautiful • Pa- 
vilion of Flora, the fountains and ob- 
elisk of the Place de la Concorde. We 
are on the Quai d'Orsay, the edge of the 
Faubourg St. Germain, where it is in bad 
taste to allude to the " Marseillaise," the 
assumptionbeing that everybody's grand- 
father was beheaded to that tune: it is 
the last retreat of conservatism, Ultra- 
montanism, aristocracy — the old aris- 
tocracy, which looks down upon the Na- 
poleonic courts and the nobility of Louis 
Philippe as parvenus, and on the sove- 
reigns themselves as pretenders. Here 
are the streets so familiar in novels of Pa- 
risian life, Balzac's, About's, Feuillet's — 
the Rue de Bellechasse, Rue de Varenne, 
Rue St. Dominique, Rue de Crenelle ; 
here is the Rue du Bac, named from the 
ferry at its foot which plied across the 
Seine before Mansard built his bridge, 
the Pont Royal, not two hundred years 
ago. Madame de Stael in exile on the 
Lake of Geneva sighed for the gutter of 
the Rue du Bac, for which countless fair 
Americans likewise sigh, as on its mar- 
gin stand the famous shops of the Bon 
Marche and Petit St. Thomas, two of the 
prime attractions of Paris to a large class 



of our countrywomen. Why the latter 
should be so called I never could divine, 
unless it takes its name from the neigh- 
boring church of St. Thomas Aquinas, 
who may be called the Less in respect 
to Thomas surnamed Didymus, although 
the Angelic Doctor was the superior in 
faith, and appears never to have doubt- 
ed anything. The European custom of 
giving names to shops as well as inns 
puzzles Americans at first, but there is 
something specially incongruous in buy- 
ing gewgaws, or even plain dry goods, 
under the patronage of a saint. 

The principal feature of this part of 
Paris is the Hotel des Invaiides, the 
great military asylum, an immense, airy, 
cheerful, uninteresting building, and its 
church, containing the tomb of Napo- 
leon I. W^hatever may be the rank of 
Mansard as an architect of palaces — and 
I am inclined to think that much of the 
beauty and dignity are due to his pecu- 
liar style — it must be a strange taste that 
can tolerate his ecclesiastical buildings. 
Everything at the church of tne Inva- 
iides corresponds to its architecture — 
the sculpture, paintings and monuments. 
The crypt occupies the same position in 
the church that the ladies' cabin does in 
an ocean-steamer, part above, part be- 
low, deck. There is nothing imposing or 
beautiful in the interior ; the square pil- 
lars do not suit the round vault ; Pradier's 
colossal statues, representing twelve of 
Napoleon's victories, are big but not 
great. The tomb alone and the thought 
of it make the place solemn, awful. There 
are certain phrases to which no French- 
man is insensible. " The sun of Auster- 
litz," "the cannon of Areola," are words 
which thrill a chord in the coldest heart 
of even a Legitimist. It is trite to say 
that glory is what all Frenchmen prize 
above everything on earth and in heav- 
en, and that Napoleon is the incarnation 
of Glory : no nation, almost no individ- 
ual, is inaccessible to the same enthusi- 
asm. There is a magic in the names of 
conquerors — Alexander, Caesar, Charle- 
magne, William of Normandy ; the most 
dauntless courage, the highest military 
talent do not possess it ; there must be 
victory besides. For the space of a gen- 



1879-] 



WHY DO- WE LIKE PARIS? 



105 



eration this man's life was a gigantic vic- 
tory, a prolonged triumph : the imagina- 
tion cannot resist the impression. The 
execration of Byron and Wordsworth 
could find no comparison for his over- 
throw but the fall of the archangel. It 



is not the hero of the French nation, but 
something more tremendous, which rests 
in that sarcophagus — one of the Titanic 
race, who strides across the earth, leaving 
a memory to endure as long as time. It 
is to be remembered, above all things. 




GRAND STAIRCASE OF THE TRIBUNAL DE COMMERCE. 



that this man slew the Revolution. It is 
true that the monster was gorged with the 
blood of her own children, the Gironde, 
the Mountain, the Convention, and that 
many blows and wounds had been dealt 
her by the exasperated nation; but the 



death - stroke was given by Napoleon 
when he fired on the mob on the 5th of 
October, 1795, and he stamped out the 
last spark of life four years later, when he 
seized upon the divided government and 
cried, " I will have no more factions." 



io6 



IVI/y no IV£ LIKE PARIS? 



[June, 



It was but a week or two after that 
fateful 13th Vendemiaire that the Place 
de la Revolution (formerly Place de Lou- 
is XV.), purged of its guillotine, was re- 
named Place de la Concorde.* Leavingr 




tOYER OF THE ^EW OPERA-HOUbE 



the Rive Gauche without exploring a 
tithe of its noteworthy places, we cross 
the Pont de la Concorde and return to 
the Rive Droite, entering at once the 

* Galignani's Guide-book says in 1800 ; Mignet's 
History, 28th October, 1795, or 4th Brumaire. 



vast splendid square. The fountains 
bulge like great crystal goblets in the 
sunshine, the obehsk of Luxor cuts sharp 
against the blue sky, the marble horses 
prance in eternal struggle with their 
marble grooms : on 
one hand is the riv- 
er, beyond it the 
facade of the Legis- 
lative Palace, above 
which looms the 
dome of the Inva- 
lides; on the other, 
between two palaces 
with arcades and por- 
ticos, the broad Rue 
Royale displays the 
pillared Corinthian 
front of the church 
of the Madeleine ; 
before us is the ver- 
dure of the Champs 
Elysees. All the gay 
life of Paris is glan- 
cing through this 
i^rena on the way to 
and from the Bois 
de Boulogne, yet 
who can see it for 
the first time and 
forget that hither the 
tumbrils brought 
their load ; that here 
stood the guillotine 
like a Moloch which 
France fed with her 
children by heca- 
tombs ; that here fell 
the head of an inno- 
cent king and queen, 
of their saintly sister 
Madame Elizabeth, 
of countless men 
and women whose 
only crime was be- 
ing holy or brave or 
noble, of many who 
had already shed 
their blood for their country ? Let French- 
men remember it, and let others forget 
it if they can; but this is not easy with 
the ruins of the Tuileries in sight, with 
"Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite " of the 
Commune, that "brotherhood of Cain," 



WHY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



107 



stamped like a red hand everywhere 
on walls and parapets. Order and taste 
are always busy in France repairing the 
ravages perpetrated by the love of de- 
struction which seems inherent in the 
people : it seems as 
if France had two 
hands, one of which 
is for ever undoing 
the work of the oth- 
er. It is not easy to 
say how long it will 
be before the deft 
and diligent hand 
can heal and hide 
the gashes and scars 
of that spring of 1 87 1 . 
One of the most piti- 
lessly devastated and 
disfigured regions is 
the B o i s de Bou- 
logne, and here Na- 
ture alone can recre- 
ate the beauty of the 
place: she takes time 
for her tasks; the 
next generation will 
never know the en- 
chantment of that 
spot under the Sec- 
ond Empire. The 
lake, the islets, the 
cascades, the lawns, 
the shrubberies still 
make it the prettiest 
and most fairy-like 
of public parks in its 
artificial features; 
but the woods, the 
noble trees which 
with patient energy 
had twice within a 
century spread their 
branches over its 
heights and hollows, 
are gone : the stumps 
which cover the long 
bare hillsides are all 
that remain of them. In some directions 
there are still thick copses through which 
the rider turns his horse's head and can- 
ters along as solitary as on a forest-path ; 
but he soon emerges upon a scene of 
desolation which turns him back to the 



frequented parts of the park, among the 
barouches and landaus and crowds of 
people on foot and on horseback, to ask 
for beer at one of the chalets or for milk 
at the dairy of the Pre Catalan. 




STREET OF OLDEN PARIS, BY G. DORE. 



Of the infinite variety of amusement 
and pastime which Paris offers I have 
heard my country - people speak most 
often and lovingly of the theatres, in- 
cluding the opera : as comparatively few 
of them mentioned concerts, it is to be 



io8 



IVBY DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



supposed that the dramatic and scenic 
elements of the performance count at 
least for as much as the music in their 
enjoyment. This preference would not 
seem strange if it were not so often ex- 
pressed by Americans who do not un- 
derstand French. Yet even with this 
limitation it will not surprise anybody 
who has been much at the French the- 
atres. The part of every actor in the 
drama, the very plot of the play, can be 
guessed by our quick wits, thanks to the 
perfection with which every one fills his 
or her character. In spite of Puritanism 
and Quakerism, we are a playgoing peo- 
ple, and although there is little in the 
present standard of our stage, as regards 
either the drama itself or its representa- 
tion, to cultivate the taste of an audience, 
the least critical spectator feels the relief 
from the intolerable inequalities of the 
star system, the charm of a performance 
in which every walking gentleman plays 
his part and preserves his character as 
carefully as the hero and heroine of the 
piece. This is true not of the Theatre 
Fran^ais alone, the Comedie Franqaise, 
or, as it is proudly and popularly known, 
Le Franqais, the foremost theatre of the 
world, the home of the classics, of high 
tragedy and genteel comedy, but of any 
third-rate theatre of Paris. If the Fran- 
9ais is to be considered first-rate, if no oth- 
er is to be included in the same class on 
account of the choice of subjects, the clas- 
sic drama is admirably performed at the 
Odeon, and the range of the Gymnase is 
good. It is the character of the plays 
rather than the performance which de- 
termines the standing of the theatre in 
Paris, but the plays in a measure make 
the performers. The Palais Royal is 
first-rate of its kind : it was there that 
the Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein made 
Offenbach famous and set the fashion of 
the opera bouffe in 1867. The opera 
bouffe was run into the gutter : the old 
graceful, lively opera comique has come 
into favor again, and the Palais Royal 
entertains its audiences with farces. 

"The Comedie Fran^aise," says £mile 
Augier, the author of Les Fourchambault, 
the successful play of last summer, "has 
the honor of being the sole institution of 



the old monarchy which has survived it, 
with the exception of the French Acad- 
emy : it is already two centuries old, a 
longevity which is becoming more and 
more rare with us. It is not only a na- 
tional monument, but an historical monu- 
ment intimately connected with the histo- 
ry of our literature. ' ' Moliere's troupe, per- 
forming his plays under his direction, be- 
came so popular that the duke of Orleans, 
brother of Louis XIV., invited them to 
perform in his palace, the Palais Royal, 
and the edifice in which their direct dra- 
matic successors perform his comedies 
to-day is a portion of the Palais Royal, 
and was begun by another duke of Or- 
leans, the notorious Philippe Egalite, a 
few years before the Revolution. Mo- 
liere is the genhcs loci : the neighboring 
street and fountain bear his name ; hard 
by is the house in which he died, bearing 
an inscription to commemorate its pre- 
mature loss: he was but fifty -one years 
old. He still remains the presiding spir- 
it of the Fran^ais : for every play of Cor- 
neille's or Racine's they give three at 
least of MoHere's. A classic drama per- 
formed by that company is one of the 
most complete and consummate intel- 
lectual enjoyments which civilization af- 
fords. In reading Le Cid, Athalie or Le 
Misanthrope one may fancy that the 
verse is too stately, too stilted perhaps, 
the subject too remote from our sympa- 
thies to excite emotion of any sort, but 
hear them at the Franqais and we are 
surprised into tears and laughter. There 
is no subject about which everybody is 
so ready to turn laudator temporis acti 
as the stage. I was told that Bressant, 
the Brohan sisters. Mademoiselle Plessy 
were good, certainly, but that I could 
form no idea of the way in which cer- 
tain parts should be given unless I had 
seen Lafon and Mademoiselle Mars, who 
died long ago. Augustine Brohan is dead 
too now, Bressant and Madeline Bro- 
han have retired, Delaunay has given 
up youthful parts, and I cannot think 
that Croizette and Mounet-Sully replace 
them : there is something rough and raw 
in their acting compared to the perfect 
finish of the others. They were brought 
up on a different drama — Sardou's plays, 



IVB'V DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



109 



dramatized stories like Le Sphinx. There 
is nothing to train them to personate such 
noble folly as Bressant's rendering of 

Si le roi m'avait donne 
Paris, sa grande ville, etc., 

such exquisite tenderness as Delaunay's 
reading aloud Agnes's love-letter in 
L ' Ecole des Femmes, such 
delicate ridicule as Coque- ( ^ 

lin's recitation of 

Au voleur, au voleur, au voleur. 

As the tradition of fine 
manners is lost in private 
life, it must decline on the 
stage, or the latter would 
cease to fulfil our first de- 
mand and hold the mirror 
up to Nature. \i\hQgrand 
Steele is as obsolete as the 
age of Pericles, its mode 
and style maybe discard- 
ed from the stage like 
mask and cothurn, but it 
will be vain to expect ac- 
tors to produce them now 
and then as a dramatic 
curiosity : the smooth pol- 
ish, the fine edge, will be 
gone. The loss of this 
training will be destruc- 
tive of shades in acting, 
and these are not con- 
fined to the older drama, 
although there are fewer 
niceties in modern plays. 
Any one who remembers 
Bressant's lofty " Misfor- 
tune is always respect- 
able " in the tipsy scene 
of Le Jeune Mart, or the 
combination of dignity 
and impertinence' of his 
"Je m'appelle Gaston" in 
Le Gendre de M. Poirier, 
will understand what I 
mean. It is well known 
that when from bad lives or failing pow- 
ers or any other cause great actors lose 
their general finish and perfection, they 
fall back \x^on points , the telling speeches 
and gestures which bring down the house. 
To produce striking effects becomes their 
sole aim : the whole quality of their act- 



ing deteriorates under this fatal system 
until it becomes as coarse and unnatural 
as poor scene-painting. What is true of 
individuals will become true by degrees 
of the whole stage, and of the drama 
itself, if the success of a play, whether in 
the composition or the performance, de- 




pends on situations and climaxes. The 
Theatre Fran^ais is a bulwark against 
such decline : the fine critical percep- 
tions of the French people maintain its- 
integrity. The government pays the 
Frangais and the Odeon a yearly sub- 
sidy on the condition of the perform- 



fVJ/y DO WE LIKE PARIS? 



ance of a certain number of standard 
dramas and the production of one or 
more new plays of merit. The regular 
members of the company are pension- 
ed, which ensures them against want in 
their old age and protects them from 
the temptation and degradation of mere 
money-making by "starring." 

The opera too is subsidized by the 
government. There are three recog- 
nized operas in Paris, besides a yearly 
fungus -growth which takes possession 
of smaller theatres and disappears at 
the close of the season. There is the 
Opera Comique, the most national of 
all, standing as it should on the Place 
Boieldieu, named from the composer 
of La Dame Blanche. The comic opera, 
though not a native of France, is natural- 
ized there, and long is the list of charming 
compositions, little masterpieces, which it 
has produced : some of them are often per- 
formed in our country — Les Diainattts de 
la Couronne and Fra Diavolo — and there 
are many others which would be equally 
liked if they were known, the delightful 
Pre aux Clercs, for instance. There is the 
Italian Opera, the name of which speaks 
for itself and conjures up a phantom Car- 
nival, a long procession of romantic fig- 
ures — Norma the Druidess, the Venetian 
Desdemona, the coquettish Rosina with 
fan and mantilla, Figaro, Edgardo — and 
beneath their disguise we recognize the 
statuesque Pasta, the impassioned Mali- 
bran, the glorious Grisi, Lablache, Tam- 
burini, Rubini, Mario — vanished faces, 
silent voices, which once enraptured na- 
tions. The Italian Opera has lately be- 
come bankrupt, owing to the change of 
musical taste. I have proceeded in in- 
verse order, for by rights the Opera Co- 
mique comes last, and first the Grand 
Opera, called also the National Acad- 
emy of Music and French Opera-house. 
The last achievement, or rather attempt, 
of Napoleon II. to prop his throne with 
playthings was the present house, which 
was not finished until after the fall of the 
Empire. It fronts on the Boulevard des 
Capucines, and has sufficient space to 
be seen on all sides. The building is 
excessively rich and ornate, covered 
with statuary and sculptured decoration, 



but there is great diversity of opinion 
as to its architectural merit. To me it 
wants stateliness, grace, character : the 
groups of statues flinging about their 
arms and legs have neither meaning 
nor dignity. Opinions differ also about 
the auditorium, which has the capital de- 
fect of not being good for sound through- 
out. The staircase and foyer are mag- 
nificent: they may not be in faultless 
taste, but every one finds them splendid 
and elegant. The paintings by Baudin 
are real works of art. The polished mar- 
ble floor, the shining colonnades of this 
long and lofty hall, remind me, more by 
freak of fancy than from real resem- 
blance, of the aisles of St. Paul-without- 
the- Walls at Rome — a superb basilica 
which has been constructed during the 
present century on the site of a church 
of the earliest Christian ages burned 
down in 1823. 

These novelties must not make us for- 
get that the right bank of the Seine has 
old quarters too — the Marais, a region in- 
tersected by streets with delightful names 
— Rue des Francs Bourgeois, Rue des 
Manteaux Blancs, Rue Neuve des Petits 
Champs bringing to mind former strug- 
gles for municipal privileges — and con- 
vents standing on the green hem of the 
town. This was the Paris of the Valois 
dynasty and of the Guises, the principal 
scene of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
the centre of the cabals for and against 
Richelieu and Mazarin. The streets are 
lined with fine old hotels spotted with 
sun - dials, stimulating to curiosity : we 
should like to go into them all, but there 
is not time for one. We have not even 
looked into the Louvre, the finest museum 
of art in the world, which escaped the de- 
struction that overtook the Tuileries on 
the 22d of May, 1 87 1 , though its fate hung 
on a breath : it was filled with powder 
and petroleum : a match, a spark, the 
slamming of a door, would have been 
the signal for an explosion. It was 
saved by the decision and courage of 
three men — the marquis de Sigoyer, 
commanding the Twenty -sixth battal- 
ion, and two captains of engineers, MM. 
Delambre and Riondel. To them we 
owe it that those marvels of beauty and 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



ITl 



genius remain to instruct and enchant 
two hemispheres. 

In this rapid, disconnected review I 
have enumerated a few of the attractions 
of Paris, of her curiosities, her wonders, 
her sources of interest and enjoyment, 
yet enough to detect some ingredients 
of her spell for all minds and moods. 
To some people the magic lies in what 
she is, to others in what she has been ; 
to some in what she gives, to others 



in what she suggests ; to most people in 
the combination of all these, Which pro- 
duce a composite influence acting differ- 
ently upon different natures. Merely to 
try and skim the cream of pleasure from 
the surface of life in Paris by a single 
article is like nothing but the tiresome 
old woman of whom we have often heard 
who tried to bale out the ocean with a 
pint pot. Sarah B. Wister. 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 




APPROACH FROM THE SEA — OFF MOUNT SORRANTO. 



THE traveller approaching for the 
first time the northern coast of 
Spain from the Bay of Biscay will be 
surprised and charmed by the grandeur 
of the mountain - scenery which meets 
his view. At a distance of seventy miles 
at sea, on a clear day, the snow-capped 
peaks of the Cantabrian Pyrenees are 
visible, first like islands here and there 
rising out of the bosom of the deep, but 
gradually shaping themselves, as the be- 
holder draws nearer, into connected por- 
tions of a continuous coast-line. Grand- 



er still is the effect when, the approach 
having been made under cover of night, 
the voyager mounts to the deck in the 
first cool flush of early morning to find 
his vessel riding the waves like a sea- 
bird under the shadow of these giant 
mountains, which, descending in green 
cultivated slopes to the very water's edge 
before him, stretch away in bold bluffs and 
fantastic promontories to the east and west, 
seeming to offer an impassable barrier to 
the farther progress of his journey. 
Yet this coast, to all appearance so 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



inhospitable, is in reality indented with 
numerous bays and inlets where ocean- 
vessels may enter and find havens land- 
locked and secure, amid poplar -lined 
banks, fertile vineyards and hillsides 
from which the chimes in hoary church- 
towers ring out the passing hours and 
summon the faithful to their devotions. 
Such is the charming contrast that awaits 
the voyager who, after having tossed 
about for a night or two on the Biscay 
waters, finds his vessel safely moored 
in the quiet waters of the Bilbao River, 
a little stream winding in and out among 
the mountains, and affording navigable 




PI LOT -TOWER AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE 
BILBAO RIVER. 

communication between the sea and the 
city of Bilbao, eight miles inland. 

It must be admitted that one's impres- 
sions of Spain as derived from first con- 
tact with her people and civilization in 
the persons of the pilot and custom-house 
officer are not as favorable as might be 
desired. While the arriving steamer is 
still well out at sea an open boat, pulled 
by ten or a dozen swarthy oarsmen — pic- 
turesque-looking fellows in caps of red 
or blue flannel, but otherwise conspicuous 
for their scantiness of habiliments — comes 
alongside, and one of its occupants clam- 
bers up the ladder with the agility of a 
cat, mutters a greeting to the captain, and 
proceeds to take command of the ship. 
There is a troublesome bar at the mouth 
of the river, and for a paltry matter of 



I five or six dollars, to be divided among 
them all, this adventurous boat's crew 
have put out to sea at one or two o'clock 
in the morning to take their chance of 
putting a pilot on some incoming ves- 
sel. Standing on the bridge, his eye in- 
tently fixed on the signal-tower in the 
river yonder, where, by a flag waved to 
the right or left, the vessel's course is 
directed, our pilot has the air of a lazy, 
good-natured good-for-nothing — a sort 
of marine Rip Van Winkle, who only 
works because he has to, and who will 
probably lie asleep all the afternoon un- 
der the shade of some friendly tree, con- 
tent until the few pesetas earned by this 
morning's work are gone. But, for all 
that, he brings us safely over the bar, 
we steam triumphantly past the pilot- 
tower, the captain passes, around a bran- 
dy-bottle and glass among the swarthy 
oarsmen, and a few moments later the 
pilot has gone and the ship's whistle 
is blowing for the customs officer, who 
comes aboard at Portugalete. Although 
addressed as " Senor Don So-and-So," 
a rare specimen of the shabby-genteel 
functionary is the moustached individual 
in cocked hat, cloak and rusty uniform 
who steps aboard, follows the captain 
down to the after cabin, inspects our 
trunks — or pretends to — signs his name 
with a magnificent flourish, gulps down 
a stiff glass of brandy, and leaves again. 
On his coat-sleeves, covered with tatter- 
ed lace, one can read the story of all the 
faded glories of Spain. But he looks hap- 
pier when he departs than he did when he 
stepped on board. " Que voulez-vous f" 
says our captain, who is a Frenchman. 
" The poor fellow's salary is a mere pit- 
tance, he tells me he has six children, 
and — " He shrugs his shoulders. We 
are left to infer the rest as to what has 
passed between them. 

Portugalete, the little town opposite 
which we have stopped for a few mo- 
ments, runs straggling up the hillside, 
with several steep streets no wider than 
a Fifth Avenue sidewalk. But they are 
densely populated with old women, ba- 
bies and dogs, and but sparse glimpses 
of blue sky can be seen between the 
overhanging eaves and windows above. 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



"3 



At the summit of the knoll up which 
any one of these streets leads, stands, 
amid a grove of ancestral poplars, the 
old church of Santa Maria, in which 
during the late Carlist war some three 
hundred of Don Carlos's tatterdemahons 
took refuge when closely pursued by the 
victorious royalists after the decisive bat- 



tle of Somorrostro. But vainly did they 
seek refuge " even at the horns of the 
altar." The royal troops promptly oc- 
cupied half a dozen of the neighboring 
heights with their batteries, knocked 
away a goodly portion of the church- 
tower, clock, chimes and all, sent hun- 
dreds of shells down through the tiled 




DELIVERY OF AMERICAN PETROLEUM IN SPAIN. 



roof into the midst of the enforced wor- 
shippers within, and finally compelled 
the surrender of the entire party. Amid 
the hush and quiet now pervading the 
interior of this grand old edifice one 
finds it hard to realize that it has so 
recently witnessed such a scene of car- 
nage. There are, to be sure, some jagT 
ged portions of the bell -tower yet un- 
repaired, and the parish schoolhouse ad- 
joining it still stands roofless and dis- 
mantled. But the chimes have been re- 
placed, the hands once more mark the 
hours on the dial, and the inscription 
over the doorway, "Non est hie aliud 
nisi Do7nus Dei et Porta Cceli" reminds 
us as we enter that, notwithstanding 
man's profanation, this is still God's 
house only. 

Santa Maria Church — it is a cathedral 
in fact — was built late in the fifteenth 
century, although the earliest inscrip- 
tion visible dates from early in the six- 
teenth (1532), when, as a tablet informs 



us, " Don Pedro de Salazar and his be- 
loved wife brought the remains of the 
former's father to this spot, and caused 
them to be interred in this chapel." 
There is another very curious chapel 
dating from 1560, and a costly bronze 
reredos in scriptural bas-reliefs extend- 
ing from the floor to the roof in the rear 
of the chancel, which must have griev- 
ously taxed the purses of the faithful. 

Under the hill, and fronting directly 
on the river, is a new Portugalete — a 
long, terraced avenue with stone bal- 
ustrade in front, and lined on its inner 
side with elegant granite dwellings of 
modern construction, much similar to 
those seen on upper Fifth Avenue about 
Central Park. Hither in summer come 
the wealthy Bilbaoans to enjoy the sea- 
breezes and forget the cares of city-life. 
Many of these dwellings, now rebuilt, 
were destroyed by Don Carlos's artil- 
lerists, while others adjoining them, and 
belonging to adherents of the cause, were 



114 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



left untouched. The Carlists, it seems, 
knew well at which to direct their aim. 

Opposite Portugalete, on the point 
formed by the river's entrance into the 
bay. is the bathing-resort of the Bilbao 
people — Las Arenas, with a gently-slop- 
ing beach of fine hard sand and the 
usual seaside medley of bath-houses, 
saloons and pavilions, such as one sees 
at Coney Island, Atlantic City or any 
other American salt-water resort. A 
submarine cable from Point Lizard, Eng- 
land, comes in here. The irrepressible 
Yankee is represented too, by advertise- 
ment at least. The writer saw the post- 
er of a well-known American sewing- 
machine company glaring at him in 
flaming letters as he sat on the veran- 
da of one of the hotels waiting depart- 
ure by the horse - railway, which fur- 
nishes communication every fifteen min- 
utes during the day between Las Arenas 
and Bilbao. Advertising, in fact, is con- 
ducted on a polyglot basis in this region. 
All the way up along the river there may 
be seen over the store doorways signs 
in Spanish, French and English. The 
horse - railway track follows the river- 
bank all the way to Bilbao, the cars be- 
ing drawn by mules, and resembling in 
external appearance those in general use 
in American cities, though the rate of 
speed is considerably greater. The eight 
miles are made in about an hour, the 
mules going at a gallop most of the dis- 
tance. So well patronized is the road, 
especially in summer, that the company 
is taxed to its utmost to provide trans- 
portation for the crowds of passengers, 
and consequently another railway, to 
follow the opposite bank of the river, 
is already talked of. 

We pay our ten-cent fare to a spruce- 
looking chap in uniform with the label 
"Conductor " on his cap, and he in turn 
"punches with care in the presence of 
the passengaire" by tearing out from a 
coupon -book and handing us a ticket 
entitling the holder to two sections in the 
first-class compartment of the car. In 
the second class we discover a motley 
gathering of workmen, market-women 
and peasantry, yet, for that matter, the 
Spanish horse -car is democratic enough 



throughout. It is no uncommon sight to 
see a dark-complexioned donna in veil 
and mantilla standing outside on the rear 
platform. Inside or outside everybody 
smokes, regardless of the presence of 
the gentler sex. The lady who " likes 
the odor of a good cigar" is altogether 
a superfluity in Spain. 

The roadway skirting the river is well 
built up for nearly its entire length, if 
we except two or three intervals where 
wheat -fields or vineyards come strag- 
gling down to its border. At every quar- 
ter of a mile is seen a sentry-box, where 
a carabinero, gun in hand, stands watch- 
ing for any attempt at smuggling. There 
are several villages on one side or the 
other, the two principal ones on the op- 
posite bank, San Nicolas and Luchana, 
being the ore-loading stations or termini 
of the various railways connecting with 
the iron -mines in the mountains a few 
miles back. Farther up, within a mile 
and a half of the city, is Oleavaga, the 
station at which petroleum-vessels have 
to come to anchor. One is almost cer- 
tain at any time to find an American 
vessel or two anchored at this point. 
The writer saw a three-master from 
Richmond, Virginia, discharging a car- 
go of oil there. The blue-topped casks, 
so familiar to the eye of any one who 
has ever visited the petroleum -region, 
are lowered over the ship's side into 
barges, v/hich are towed up to town by 
lines of women, whose labor can be 
hired for less than that of mules. The 
condition of the women of the poorer 
classes here is abject and pitiable in- 
deed. Women may be seen every- 
where, in the fields, on the roads, on 
the wharves, in the quarries, toiling like 
cattle, with very little prospect of earn- 
ing more than the provender necessary 
to keep them alive. 

Far above the housetops at Oleavaga, 
along the steep mountain - side, over 
arches and through cuts, runs the dus- 
ty turnpike-road connecting Bilbao with 
Santander. In the morning and even- 
ing the diligence — for stage-travel must 
always remain the principal means of 
communication in this mountainous 
country — goes dashing by with three 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



115 



horses tandem, a great snapping of whip- 
lashes, occasional volleys of oaths, and a 
cloud of dust enveloping all. He who 
desires to study Spain and her people 
from an inside point of view should take 
one ride in any of these mountain -dili- 
gences, but only one : he will never want 
another. 

Just before reaching the stone post 
which marks the city limit one sees on 
the river-bank the English burial-ground, 
a shaded enclosure of an acre or so, with 
a neat chapel and gateway at the en- 



trance, and thickly planted with willows 
and shrubbery, from the midst of which 
a snow - white monument or gravestone 
here and there peeps out. Of late years 
the iron-ore trade has attracted to Bilbao 
hundreds of Enghsh residents and sail- 
ors, and in this quiet spot has been laid 
to rest, far from home and kindred, many 
a poor fellow whom the rigid interment- 
laws of this priest-ridden land have ex- 
cluded from burial in the public cemetery. 
Like Washington, Bilbao may be term 
ed a "city of magnificent distances," her 




THE ENGLISH BURIAL-GROUND. 



limits extending out into the fields and 
up the mountain -sides far beyond her 
thickly -settled centre. This it was that 
enabled Don Carlos during his siege of 
the city to boast in turgid rhetoric that 
he had "captured a portion of Bilbao." 
His pickets, in fact, were posted on all 
the country roads in the environs, many 
of them within the city lines and within 
talking-distance of the sentries, but none 
of them ever actually entered the city 
proper except as prisoners. The siege 
lasted for one hundred and two days ; 
the inhabitants were reduced to a diet 
of horse-flesh ; upward of five thousand 
shells were thrown into the city from the 
forts on the neighboring mountain-tops ; 
houses, churches, and, among other ob- 
jects, a very handsome wire suspension 



bridge spanning the river, were demol- 
ished ; yet the brave Bilbaoans held out, 
and finally had the satisfaction of seeing 
Don Carlos and his ragged cohorts beat 
a precipitate retreat over the adjacent 
mountains. To-day the Spanish gov- 
ernment is replacing at its own expense 
all buildings destroyed by the besiegers' 
guns, and Bilbao shows but few traces 
of her recent trials. 

One's impressions of the city on enter- 
ing it by the horse-railway from down 
the river are very pleasing. Rows of 
palatial dwellings, with gardens before 
them, line the road on the left : to the 
right, extending along the river-front, is 
a park with flower-beds, shrubbery and 
fountains, shaded by a dense growth of 
forest trees and thronged every afternoon 



ii6 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



with well - dressed promenaders of both 
sexes. On the other side of the park can 
be caught glimpses of steamers, sailing- 
vessels and smaller craft lying at anchor 
in the river or discharging their cargoes 
at the quay ; and beyond them, in turn, 
may be seea the mountain-slope ascend- 
ing abruptly on the other side. 

Most Spanish cities are famous for 
nothing if not their antiquity, but this 
one, with its thirty-and-one thousand in- 
habitants, is an exception to the rule in 
that it has both an antiquated and a 
modern side to it. The centres of the 




THE GREAT SEAL OF BILBAO. 

old and the new town are very clearly 
defined even to the oesual observer. An 
old New Jersey farm-house with a fanci- 
ful Mansard-roofed wing looking haught- 
ily down upon it, or a half-ruined cha- 
teau upon which some ambitious owner 
of later days has built up a brand-new 
, modern villa, aptly typifies this little city, 
which in spite of its five or six hundred 
years of existence is to-day in many re- 
spects as wide awake and enterprising 
in its habits and ideas as any of our live 
American towns. 

Bilbao is built, as it were, in the bend 
of a figure 5 formed by the river, the 
more ancient quarter of the city being 
at the upper end of the curve. At this 
point the river is spanned by an anti- 
quated stone bridge of two arches, now 
closed to travel. Yet one looking at its 
form and architecture, ixdolent of the 
past, cannot but picture to himself the 
pageants of mail-clad horsemen, with 
all their pennants and blazonry and 
nodding plumes and martial music, that 



on many a triumphal occasion in days 
long gone by have passed over its now 
cruinbling roadway. The old bridge 
and the large church adjoining it, which 
is now used as the municipal building, 
have been adopted as a device for the 
great seal of Bilbao. A wide quay be- 
fore the city hall and the arcaded side- 
walks adjoining it are used as the pub- 
lic market-place, and at any time before 
noon the spot is crowded with chatter- 
ing venders of fish, flesh, fruit, vege- 
tables and a thousand varieties of no- 
tions and knickknacks. The river, at this 
point seems, too, to be utilized as a sort 
of public washtub, for from sunrise to 
dark there may be seen at frequent in- 
tervals along the banks groups of a doz- 
en or so of barefooted laundresses in 
gaudy-colored skirts and kerchiefs wash- 
ing out their family linen or putting it on 
the rocks to dry. 

At every turn in this quarter of Bilbao 
the stranger meets with much to enter- 
tain him. Dark and narrow streets, with 
family crests and escutcheons quaintly 
carved over every doorway ; long wind- 
ing stairways straggling up the hillsides, 
with a resting-place or landing before 
each door on the way up; alley -ways 
ending abruptly in walls of rock ; a jum- 
ble of shops and chapels and convents, 
— all recall some bit of canvas torn from 
a mediceval painting, and suddenly re- 
produced here before the admiring eyes 
of to-day. But follow the river around 
for a distance of half a mile, and the 
scene is changed at once. Here are a 
modern railway-depot built in the style 
of a Swiss chalet, and said to be the 
finest in Spain ; a theatre where you 
may hear the Ballo in Maschera or Lii- 
cia di Laimnennoor sung by an Italian 
troupe of more than usual merit ; a club- 
house where, if fortunate enough to have 
the privilege of admission, you may dai- 
ly read the London Times or any of the 
principal Paris papers ; an hotel where 
for a dollar and a half a day may be 
found all the comforts of the large ho- 
tels in any European capital ; a public 
park, a telegraph- office, and stores stock- 
ed with a bewildering and brilliant vari- 
ety of merchandise. The boulevard and 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



117 



park extending along the river-front be- 
fore the Hotel d'Inglaterra will prove 
an attractive place for the visitor. At 
early morning he may stand there and 
see the sunrise, breaking over the moun- 
tains, successively tipping each peak with 
gold while the base is still swathed in its 
garment of nocturnal shadows. During 
the afternoon come throngs of well-dress- 
ed ladies and gentlemen promenading, 
and toward sunset the shaded walks and 
lawns are resonant with the shouts and 
laughter of hundreds of joyous chil- 
dren. And when night has settled down 



upon the scene, and the gas-lamps glim- 
mer through the shade, there may be 
heard now and then the musical tum- 
tum of a guitar and a voice trolling out 
a lively bolero as some group of merry- 
makers go by, with perhaps a couple or 
two of dancers with joined hands whirling 
in pirouettes through the dim-lit shadows 
in advance of them. 

To the student in ethnology it is inter- 
esting to note the strongly - contrasted 
types met with in the faces of the peo- 
ple. The swarthy Moorish complexion, 
black eyes and raven hair predominate. 




RIVER-FRONT, SHOWING BOULEVARD AND PARK. 



yet the Northern Goths have left their 
traces too in the clear skin, ruddy 
cheeks, flaxen locks and blue eyes not 
unfrequently encountered. Courtliness 
and dignity of manner, without the ex- 
cessive complaisance of the French, are 
noticeable everywhere among the "senor 
dons" and " caballeros." Most of the 
men dress in the fashionable styles usu- 
ally seen on the Paris boulevards, though 
here and there the sugar-loaf hat and 
ample cloak, its folds partially held up 
before the wearer's face, are still seen. 
The ladies cling more tenaciously to the 
traditional costume of their sex, the veil 
and mantilla, very few of them appear- 
ing on the streets with cloaks or bon- 
nets. Housemaids too have their dis- 



tinguishing coiffure, a double braid of 
hair falling over the back and some- 
times reaching nearly to the ground. 

French is quite generally spoken, and 
forms, as almost everywhere else in Eu- 
rope, the chief means of communication 
between foreigners and the people them- 
selves. At the table-d' hole dinner at the 
Hotel d'Inglaterra one day during the 
writer's stay there were seated twelve 
guests, ten of whom were conversing to- 
gether in French on the subject of the 
New York Herald's weather-reports. Yet 
of those ten, one was a German, two were 
English, two Moors, two Spaniards, one 
an American, and only two real French- 
men ; who, by the way, must have rel- 
ished the' babel of varied accents with 



ii8 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



which their mother - tongue was being 
served up by the assembled guests. 

The churches of Bilbao, while outward- 
ly plain and uninviting, are extremely 
costly and attractive in their internal 
decoration. The faithful must, howev- 
er, forego the luxury of chairs or cush- 
ions, and whether rich or poor must alike 
kneel upon the hard stone floor. As ear- 
ly as five in the morning one finds nume- 
rous worshippers, mostly women. But 
early rising is no difficult matter in Bil- 
bao, thanks to a quaint custom still ex- 
tant. From midnight to six A. M. the 
hours, as they are successively rung out 
by the chimes in the principal cathedral- 
tower, are.repeated by the watchman sta- 




A BILBAO MILKMAN. 

tioned in the street below, and from him 
in turn the words are caught up and re- 
uttered by every other watchman in the 
city. The effect is indescribably novel 
and beautiful. The writer chanced to be 
awakened one morning by hearing the 
neighboring chimes strike three. An in- 
stant afterward a clear, loud, ringing ten- 
or voice in the street below chanted in 
a strange but not unmusical monotone 
the words. Las tres — seretio ("Three 
o'clock, and clear"), and a moment 
later the still air of morning was reso- 
nant far and near with re-echoed cries 
of Las tres — sej-eiio, coming back from 



out the distance like the tinklings of a 
hundred silver bells. 

It is a pity to have to record of Bilbao, 
with all her churches, that she indulges 
in the luxury of occasional bull -fights. 
Four days of every August are set aside 
for this edifying sport, and during that 
period the great amphitheatre, seating 
fourteen thousand people, is daily pack- 
ed to repletion with men, women and 
children of all classes, the peasantry 
coming in by swarms from a distance 
of twenty or thirty miles around to ap- 
plaud the torreadores, and scream Bravo ! 
at the senseless slaughter of scared bulls 
and jaded horses. Six bulls are daily led 
into the ring, and as each bull, before 
being despatched, is allowed to 
kill five horses, and no more, it is 
, not difficult to figure up the sum- 
\ total of quadrupeds, bovine and 
^ equine, offered up on the altar of 
~] this barbarous custom during its 
four days' annual duration. But 
— there is an undercurrent of public 
opinion opposed to all this cruel- 
ty. Many Spaniards when the 
sport is mentioned smile and in- 
timate that, as conducted at the 
present day, it is an arrant hum- 
= bug. The horses are poor, used- 
up creatures, unfit for further ser- 
vice ; the bull generally asks no 
better than, hke the "erring sis- 
ters," to be allowed to depart in 
peace ; while the gallant torrea- 
dor, so often sung in verse and 
portrayed on canvas, is a very 
ordinary sort of fellow — agile, it 
is true, as any circus-jumper, but never, 
in reality, exposed to any great danger 
from his incensed buUship. It is safe to 
predict that in another half century bull- 
fighting will have become one of the lost 
arts in Bilbao. 

Street -venders are as numerous and 
as odd here as anywhere in Europe. 
The cigar -shops along the sidewalks 
are neat and convenient, and offer a 
capital cigar for five cents. The matu- 
tinal milkman is perhaps the most in- 
teresting character-study in Bilbao. He 
reminds one of the herdsman Tityrus, 
that bucolic swain whom Virgil apostro- 



AMONG THE BISCAYANS. 



119 



phizes as making the woodlands vocal 
with strains to his loved Amaryllis. In 
the early morning hours — and none too 
early at that — when the slothful house- 
maid begins to bestir herself and the city 
awakens to its daily life, a hei'd of ten or a 
dozen goats, marshalled by an ill-favored 
but faithful shepherd-dog and driven by 
this Spanish Tityrus, may be seen com- 
ing lazily down the street. The goatherd 
is a picture in himself, the 
very personification of 
a whole pastoral poem. 
On his head is a slouch 
cap of blue flannel ; he 
wears a short blouse ; he 
carries a shepherd's 
staff in his hand ; and 
ever and anon as he ap- 
proaches the house of a 
customer he trolls out a 
ditty as shrill as a mock- 
ing-bird's whistle from 
a reed flute which he 
raises to his lips. The 
goats know where to 
stop, the door is opened, 
the servant-maid ap- 
pears, and the penny- 
worth or two of milk is 
served fresh and steai 
ing, the other goats a I 
the dog meantime Stan 1 
ing idly by, waiting tL_ 
signal to resume their 
march. 

A description of the Biscay province 
would be incomplete without some men- 
tion of its inexhaustible iron-mining re- 
sources, which have of late years been 
developed to an extraordinary extent, 
principally by the aid of a million and 
a half pounds sterling of British capital. 
During 1878 over thirty - five hundred 
vessels, of which upward of two thour 
sand were steamers, came to Bilbao for 
iron-ore. England's foundries are large- 
ly supplied from these mines, the famous 
Creusot Iron Company of France pro- 
cures much of its material here, and 
Krupp, the great German manufacturer 
of cannon, has four vessels running reg- 
ularly between this port and Rotterdam. 
There are direct lines to Cardiff", Swan- 



sea, Middleboro' and Newcastle, to Ant- 
werp, to Dunkerque, Boulogne, Bayonne 
and La Rochelle, and shipments are made 
even to American ports. A trim Yankee 
brig, the Eugene Hale, Captain John E. 
Lord, of Calais, Maine, recently brought 
out a cargo of wheat from New York, and 
has long ere this landed her return cargo 
of Spanish iron-ore at its destination on 
the Jersey City docks. 




RAILROADING IN THE PYRENEES. 



When Pliny, the Bayard Taylor of Ro- 
man days, wrote home from this region 
that he had seen "a mountain made of 
iron," he scarcely exaggerated the truth. 
The Triano Mountains, to which it is 
supposed he referred, might with some 
slight allowance for the tales of a trav- 
eller be fairly described in those terms. 
From time immemorial there have been 
numbers of little forges or blacksmith- 
shops scattered through these mountains, 
but only during the past ten years or so 
has there been a systematic effort made 
to develop the resources of the mines. 
There are now five lines of railway, va- 
rying from six to eight miles in length, 
connecting the river with the mountain- 
fastnesses where the ore is taken out. 



AMONG THE B ISC A VANS. 



Of these roads, three were built by Eng- 
lishmen, one by the Franco-Belgian Com- 
pany and one by Bilbao enterprise. Eng- 
lish skill and English industry are visible 
everywhere, and have dotted these once 
desolate mountain - sides with populous 
villages. The locomotives are from Bir- 
mingham, the cars from Manchester, the 
tools from Sheffield, and even the tele- 
graphic-apparatus in many of the stations 
is found to bear the mark of an English 
maker. But that which most commands 
admiration is the bold engineering genius 
which has carried these roads, with dou- 
ble tracks, tunnels and solid granite em- 
bankments, up from the river-level, over 
gorges, around giddy precipices and 
through the very bowels of the cliffs, to 
summits whence one can look down upon 
other mountain-tops, upon village-dotted 
vales "stretching in pensive quietness 
between," and upon the soft blue waters 
of the Bay of Biscay beyond. Such is 
the view commanded from the village of 
Galetta, which has sprung into existence 
on the mountain-top around the Caesar 
and San Miguel mines. Its houses, its 
walls, its tiny church and its hotel, where 
"coffee and billiards" are pretentiously 
announced, are all built of iron-red mud, 
which by- exposure to the sun has become 
as hard as iron itself Its streets strag- 
gle up and down the mountain - side, 
anywhere and everywhere, regardless 
of surveyors' lines ; yet it has a mayor, 
enjoys the honor of being a railway -ter- 
minus, and is apparently happy. About 
six hundred miners, all Spaniards, live 
here, earning sums equal to a dollar and 
a dollar and a half a day. The Bis- 
cayans are good workmen, industrious, 
temperate and saving, the English say. 
Most of them own small farms, which 
they leave in charge of their wives dur- 
ing their absence here in the mines. 
When the wet season comes, however, 
they go home to look after their affairs, 
and then the mining company is com- 
pelled to replace them temporarily by 
Castilians, who as a rule are quarrel- 
some, indolent fellows, much given to 
play and drink. A fair illustration of 
their character is afforded by an incident 
that occurred a few months ago. The 



overseers reported one day that most of 
the men had quit work or were practical- 
ly doing nothing. Inquiry was at once 
ordered, resulting in the discovery that 
a rivalry had arisen between a couple 
of workmen and their respective adhe- 
rents as to which of the two could do 
the most rock-drilling in a given time. 
A sum amounting in value to five hun- 
dred dollars had been wagered by the 
competitors and their friends, a day was 
set apart for the trial for the champion- 
ship of the Pyrenees, and by general 
consent work had been suspended to 
enable the miners to watch the prog- 
ress of the contest. 

One who has any taste for the adven- 
turous will find a rare delight in the re- 
turn ride by railway down the mountain 
from Galetta to the river. He must 
crowd in with the engineer and fireman 
on the locomotive, for passenger-coaches 
are a luxury unknown on this line. The 
rapidly-descending grade of eight hun- 
dred feet in six miles renders the use 
of steam entirely superfluous ; and with 
thirty or forty ore-laden cars adding their 
impetus, the train, with brakes all on, 
goes rattling and clattering down the 
mountain-side at a rate of speed which 
makes the unaccustomed passenger hold 
his breath, and perhaps at times fervent- 
ly wish the journey were over. Yet, with 
all its spice of danger, the trip is intense- 
ly exciting. The fresh, cool mountain- 
breeze, the unsurpassed scenery, made 
up on the one side of wild ravines, yawn- 
ing gorges and bold acclivities, and on 
the other of a green carpeted landscape 
bounded by the river far below, — all 
these combine to elicit an involuntary 
exclamation of delight from the passen- 
ger, and make him forget whatever dan- 
ger, if any, there may be in the long and 
rapid descent. And when, having reach- 
ed once more the river-bank, where the 
steamer ready for sea is perchance await- 
ing him, he turns for a farewell glance at 
the cloud-capped heights from which the 
iron horse has in safety transported him, 
it is with a soul filled with new concep- 
tions of the glory of God's creation and 
the grandeur of man's triumphs. 

George L. Catlin. 



^ 



TROUVILLK 





A STREET. 



ONE of the characters in Les Facheux, 
a sort of disinterested Colonel Sel- 
lers of the seventeenth century, had a 
scheme for increasing the prosperity of 
France by converting its entire coast-line 
into seaports. His project was received 
with that laughter which it is the province 
of comedies and great inventions to call 
forth ; nevertheless, we have seen it real- 
ized, with the difference that the whole 
French coast from Cape Grisnez to the 
mouth of the Bidassoa is spangled, not 
with ports of commerce, but with gay wa- 
tering-places. Each summer some reign- 
ing queen discovers a bit of seaboard, 
where the shrimps are in their primitive 
wildness and the bathers have never yet 
thrown a rope over the arching neck of 
the wave, and triumphantly takes pos- 
session with her little court. An hotel 



makes its appearance ; villas, by ones, 
by twos, by threes, gather around it ; a 
casino rises from the waves ; a mush- 
room church in the style of the Second 
Empire springs out of the sand ; and the 
new resort is a fact. The Romulus of 
one of these summer cities is not infre- 
quently some popular artist or author. 
Le Puy, near Dieppe, was one of the 
creations of Alexandre Dumas y?/y/ Al- 
phonse Karr presided over the new birth 
of Etretat ; and Trouville was invented 
somewhere about 1830 by two marine 
painters, Charles Mozin and Isabey. 
Rambling along the Norman coast in 
search of subjects, chance led the two 
artists one day to a humble fishing- 
village at the mouth of the Toucques, 
where the rugged faces and quaint cos- 
tumes of the inhabitants promised excel- 

121 



TROUVILLE. 



lent spoil for the brush. They sought en- 
tertainment under the sign of the Agneau 
d'Or, sole inn of the village, where La 
Mere Auzeraie ruled the roast or its fishy 
substitute without a rival, and hopefully 
spread their canvases for the prey. The 
elder Dumas paid them a visit and gave 
Mother Auzeraie some lessons in cook- 
ing. In the Salon of 1834 some Paris- 
ians noticed the new name, Trouville, 
under that of Mozin on two marines, 
and the name stuck in their memories. 
They met with it again in an article by 
Dumas, and when the hot weather came 
round they made application for admis- 
sion to the Agneau d'Or, taking it and 
Trouville on the trust of the painter and 
the novelist. Madame Auzeraie — she was 
Mother Auzeraie no longer —had the te- 
merity to ask three francs a day for board 
and lodging. Parisian economy, wrath- 
ful at being thus fleeced for the benefit 
of the Golden Lamb, grasped its axe and 
fell to the erection of villas, thus laying 
the foundation of Trouville. 

It was not, however, till a score of years 
later, under the Empire, that Fashion 
smiled upon the new resort. The im- 
perial magistrates and officials were ill 
at ease on the strand of Dieppe, where 
the royalists had their summer quarters, 
and began to look about for a surf in 
which they could disport themselves with 
a sense of being at the same time polit- 
ically in their element. Dieppe had been 
started by the duchesse de Berry, and 
was absorbed by the sets of the Fau- 
bourg St. Germain and the Faubourg 
St. Honore. Its shore was trodden by 
the feet of the Forty Immortals, who 
at that time nearly all belonged to the 
Orleanist party, and by the deposed 
statesmen of that party, among them 
M. Thiers. The irhperial court had aban- 
doned Dieppe to the opposition, and be- 
taken itself to Biarritz, but Biarritz was 
too far from Paris for the lesser officials 
and busy men of the party to follow. Trou- 
ville offered them a bathing-place within 
six hours of the capital, and thither they 
repaired. Speculation soon became so rife 
in the village that a square foot of sand on 
either side of the Honfleur road rose to 
a price equal to that of a square foot of 



solid ground in the neighborhood of the 
Pare Monceaux. Villas sprang up quick- 
ly ; an hotel de ville in the style of Louis 
XIII. was erected, and followed by two 
parish churches : law and rehgion were 
thus installed as adjuvants of fashion. It 
is a watering-place religion which the 
faithful practise at Trouville — light, ele- 
gant and modish, as suits the season, the 
place and the toilettes. The elegant and 
modish architecture of the larger church, 
Notre Dame de Bon Secours, which is 
modelled on that of the Trinite in the 
Chaussee d'Antin, forms an appropriate 
setting for this religion, and supplies the 
scenery for masses arranged on the plan 
of operas, in which groups of priests and 
choir-boys in rich vestments, with flowers, 
hghts, stained windows, bells and chants, 
make an ensemble of operatic beauty and 
impressiveness. Notre Dame de Bon Se- 
cours is in the business-street of the town, 
where the butchers and bakers, the vend- 
ors of fruit, flowers and other merchan- 
dise, carry on their trades. Between this 
street an.d the sea is the visitors' quar- 
ter, which pi'esents a jumble of hotels, 
villas, casino, milliners' and pastry-cooks' 
shops, elbowing each other as closely as 
if confined by the walls of a city. There 
is little room for gardens, which do so 
much to beautify and freshen a water- 
ing-place: the Hotel de Paris, the most 
expensive in the place, is the only one 
which offers its guests the luxuries of a 
little shade and a few flower-beds. This 
absurd mania for packing the houses to- 
gether and building upward in narrow 
aspiration, instead of spreading out com- 
fortably along the shore, makes Trouville 
resemble a great anthill, and renders it 
disappointing to those who go there for 
the unsophisticated object of breathing 
the sea-air and taking sea-baths. Hence 
it has always been distasteful to the Eng- 
lish, whose open - air instincts cannot 
comprehend that passion for his native 
boulevards which leads a Parisian in 
search of recreation to plunge into an- 
other multicolored and many - voiced 
crowd. 

On Sundays this crowd is increased by 
a cargo of excursionists brought over by 
the steamer from Havre, and by a freight 



TROUVILLE. 



123 




124 



TROUVILLE. 



of busy husbands and fathers whom the 
Saturday-evening train bears away from 
their desks and the Bourse to snatch a 
brief draught of domestic feHcity from 
the whirlpool of froth and fashion in 
which their better halves are revolving. 
During the races the rash stranger who 
visits Trouville without having engaged 



a lodging may have to wander a long time 
without a shelter, and may be thankful if 
he find one of any quality or at any price 
The week of the races is to Trouville 
what the Carnival is to Nice — a climax 
of gayety, uproar and extravagance. Be- 
fore the first of August the only summer 
migrants who have arrived are the occu- 




SHRIMP-FISHING. 



pants of villas : by the twentieth every- 
body is there, and the beach has its full 
complement of children, students and 
lawyers in the vacation. Travellers who 
wish to see the most characteristic fea- 
tures of different countries are recom- 
mended to visit southern lands in sum- 
mer and northern ones in winter — to 
greet Naples under the focus of a June 
sun, and find St. Petersburg locked in 
its December frosts. To seize Trouville 
at the moment when it is most itself, the 
visitor should drop bravely down upon 
it in all the discomforts of the racing- 
week. He will find everything dearer 
than at any other time ; he will be bad- 
ly served ; he will have great difficulty 
in hiring a carriage, finding a place at 
the table -d'hote or getting hold of an 
unoccupied bathing - house ; but he will 
have the reward of having really seen 
Trouville. "See Trouville, and — see it 



no more," is the heartfelt utterance of 
many a disgusted sojourner as he climbs 
on the train which is to take him away 
on the last day of the racing-week. And 
his dissatisfaction is not without cause. 
Trouville, like many other fashionable 
resorts — like Newport and Cowes, for in- 
stance — was not made for passing stran- 
gers, who have no open sesame to its vil- 
las. The real life of the place, with its 
pleasures and its brightness, is not in the 
Casino or the large hotels : it is in the sa- 
lons. To the favored ones who give the 
watchword of Parisian society, Trouville 
society opens its store of distractions, 
filling the hours with concerts, amateur 
theatricals, improvised balls and cha- 
rades. But the sojourner at the Hotel 
de Paris or the Hotel des Roches-Noires, 
if he have no introductions, is restricted 
to the dissipations of the Casino, which 
have a certain cheap monotony. The 



TROUVILLE. 



125 



Casino at Trouville is a large, ugly build- 
ing, constructed on the plan of a French 
railway -station. Its chief advantage is 
its situation close to the sea, and it is 
one which had nearly cost it its exist- 
ence in the great tide of October, 1876. 
It is composed of a covered terrace, 
where coffee may be sipped in full view 
of the sea, a billiard -room, a gaming- 
hall, a reading-room, a dancing-hall and 
a large saloon surrounded by a gallery 
which serves for theatrical representa- 
tions, concerts and large balls. Here 
one may have the good fortune now and 
then to see two or three of the company 
of the Varietes in one of the little demi- 
nioftdaine plays of Meilhac and Halevy, 
or the greater treat of watching one of Oc- 
tave Feuillet's comedies mondaines ren- 
dered by two or three celebrities from the 



Fran^ais. Mesdames Judic, Theo and 
Croizette are yearly visitants at Trou- 
ville ; and it was on its beach that the 
equestrian portrait of the latter, with its 
background of sea, was painted by her 
brother-in-law, Carolus Duran. When 
there are no dramatic stars at Trouville 
the evening's entertainment consists of 
the regular concert, often preceded by a 
children's hop, which breaks up at half- 
past nine. The orchestra of the Casino 
is a good one, and the music is generally 
well chosen, but it is wellnigh impossible 
to hear anything, as the habitues consid- 
er the concert a mere accompaniment 
to their conversation. Any stranger who 
should take exception to this custom, and 
exhibit an ill-judged desire to hear the 
Pastoral Symphony or the waltz from the 
Roi de Lahore, would be set down as an 




MUSSEL-FISHING. 



outer barbarian, probably as an English- 
man recently imported from Shanghai or 
Brighton. 

The American element introduced the 
"Boston glide" a few years ago at the 
Casino balls, where it has happily su- 
perseded the deux temps. These Casino 
balls are very pleasant if one has a large 
acquaintance, but there is nothing free 



and easy about them : introductions are 
as necessary as at private entertainments. 
In spite of its reputation as a "fast " place, 
Trouville has preserved a touch of exclu- 
siveness peculiar to itself, and has drawn 
the line with admirable precision between 
the inonde and the demi-monde — more 
careful in this regard than Biarritz and 
other watering-places, where the mix- 



126 



TROUVILLE. 



ture of the two elements forms a hetero- 
geneous society which might not inaptly 
be termed le monde et demi. Trouville 
society is not to be arithmetically meas- 
ured by this mixed number : it solves the 
great social problem not by addition, but 
by division, with rigorous proof. It ad- 



heres rigidly to the convenances, and 
surrounds its "rosebud garden of girls" 
with the thorniest hedge of propriety. A 
man should be aware of danger in order 
to avoid it : -it is easy to recognize one of 
these damsels. Their hats are simpler, 
their lap-dogs a trifle larger, their cos- 




types OF fishermen in holiday costume. 



tume and their tone more subdued, than 
is the case with married women. The 
latter pass from one dazzling combina- 
tion to another with a variation of mag- 
nificence which leaves the lilies of the 
field and the monarch -sage in all his 
glory at equal disadvantage : the train 



from Paris is not unfrequently delayed, 
owing to the accumulation at the Gare St. 
Lazare of the leathery structures where- 
in all this glory is enshrined. Half a 
dozen transformations a day is the usual 
number undergone by the human butter- 
fly of the beau sexe at Trouville. First, 



1879-] 



TROUVILLE. 



a morning toilet, to be displayed in 
strolling on the board walk ; this gives 
place to a driving-costume in the after- 
noon, which is changed again at four 
o'clock, when every one adjourns to the 



127 



beach ; at six o'clock, dressing for dinner ; 
and at nine another metamorphosis into 
full evening-dress. As at Newport, bath- 
ing finds little place. A wide board walk 
extending the whole length of the beach 




INTERIOR OF A FISHERMAN'S HUT. 



from the pier to the Hotel des Roches- 
Noires is the general rendezvous before 
breakfast, and again before dinner. At 
these hours the products of worm and 
Worth sweep over its boards in pano- 
ramic changes, unceasingly watched on 



either side by a sedentary audience, who 
from the shade of pavilions or of spread- 
ing umbrellas well rooted in the sand 
survey the walkers with vigilant eyes. 
It is under these umbrella trees that the 
cabalistic potins are held where the birth 



128 



TROUVILLE. 



of each flirtation is registered and its 
growth measured — where the costumes 
are subjected to an ordeal of criticism, 
the rights of each new arrival to the con- 
sideration of society are carefully weigh- 
ed, and questions of etiquette and pre- 
cedence settled. 

Could the smallest part of these com- 
ments and decisions become suddenly 
audible to their objects filing by in state- 
ly procession, they would with one ac- 
cord flee those treacherous boards and 
regard light umbrellas as toadstools of 
the Evil One for ever after. But all the 
heads thus sheltered on the sands at 
Trouville are not concocting the venom- 
ed poison oithet potins. Some are brought 
together in milder confidences, and not a 
lew are virtuously poring over, the Revue 
des Deux-Mondes, which at this season 
of the year always prints a novel of Oc- 
tave Feuillet, the gentle romancer of the 
Second Empire and a prime favorite with 
the ladies who summer at Trouville. It 
is for them that the new novel is writ- 
ten : it forms a regular part of their regi- 
men, like the baths and the sea-air. It 
is soothing, invigorating, and, above all, 
it is the fashion. Un Mariage dans le 
Monde and the Jourtial d'une Femvie 
have been decried by some persons as 
false in tone and setting up a false ideal. 
It is to be feared that their critics did not 
read them at Trouville, in which case 
their carpings are of no account, for 
Feuillet's novels were made to be read 
at Trouville, as mangoes were made to 
be eaten in Cuba. 

Below the promenade, on a firm, smooth 
beach which slopes almost imperceptibly 
into the sea, are the bathing -houses, so 
arranged that the two sexes are kept at 
a puritanical distance froin each other, 
the ladies' quarters being guarded by a 
vigilant sentinel who bears the nickname 
of Pere la Pudeur. The beach looks to 
the north, and is in some respects an ex- 
cellent one. Its chief defect is its flatness. 
Even at high tide the bather who wishes 
to stand up to his neck in water must 
walk a long way before he can accom- 
plish his end. There are not many, how- 
ever, who are fired with such ambition. 
Good swimmers sometimes like to gain 



more exhilaration and a sense of being 
wet by striking out for the boats and 
diving from them. The majority of faint- 
hearted bathers — and they are in a lar- 
ger majority on the coast of Norman- 
dy than on the sands of New Jersey — 
dabble placidly in the saucer-like shal- 
lowness near the water's edge, tethered 
by ropes to the shore, looking as con- 
tented and as out of place as ducks upon 
dry land. This method of bathing has, 
besides its tameness, the inconvenience 
of displaying plenty of models for a Dau- 
mier, but few enough for a Canova. Sen- 
sitive bathers, who may wish to preserve 
their anatomy from the searching exam- 
ination of the numerous glasses levelled 
seaward, have the privilege of hiring a 
cabine aflot, and being drawn through the 
waves to a deeper bathing -place. The 
French ladies imprison their hair most 
scrupulously in the unbecoming turban 
of oilskin, having a deeply -rooted con- 
viction that salt water changes its color 
or causes it to fall out. American ladies 
know better, and the Greek maidens sub- 
mitted their locks without injury to the 
caresses of the waves, following the ex- 
ample of their sea-born goddess : 

Quand Venus Astarte, fille de I'onde amere, 
Secouait, vierge encore, las larmes de sa mere, 
Et fecondait le monde en bordant ses cheveux. 

Trouville offers other amusement dur- 
ing the day besides bathing, promenad- 
ing and dressing. The country in which 
it is situated, if not exactly picturesque, 
is smiling and verdant, and excursions 
are made in all directions by long cav- 
alcades mounted on donkeys. It is the 
regular thing to go in this way to the 
chateau of Bonneville, which is supposed 
to have been the residence of WiUiam 
the Conqueror. All that is left of its glo- 
ry is a heap of ruins tumbling over into 
the moat, an ogive door being still erect, 
with a single tower, the Tour du Ser- 
ment, where William is said to have 
bound Harold by an oath to assist him 
in the conquest of England. There is a 
fine view from the foot of the tower over 
the valley of the Toucques and the 
beaches of Trouville and Deauville. A 
woman from the neighboring farm serves 
as guide to the ruins, and dangles a can- 



TROUVILLE. 



129 



die on the end of a string in the black 
depths of the oubliette to chill the souls 
of visitors by the sight of a. ghastly heap 
of bones at the bottom — bones of feudal 
knights or of contemporary sheep. When 
Bonneville has been explored the excur- 
sionist may proceed along the road lead- 
ing to Pont-l'Eveque, cross the Toucques 
and arrive at the ruins of St. Arnould 



and of Lassay. The priory of St. Ar- 
nould dates from the beginning of the 
twelfth century : the only part still in 
existence is the crypt, which is strewn 
with remains of tombs. Under a group 
of trees is a more modern chapel, and 
a spring whose waters are reported to 
have a miraculous power of healing. 
They have at least that of refreshing and 




THE HARBOR. 



cooling, so the spring is not wholly a 
humbug. Farther on, a venerable stair- 
case, supported by ivy-mantled walls, is 
all that is left of the chateau of Las- 
say, whose history has been narrated 
by Saint-Simon. 

A pleasant drive can be taken to Hon- 
fleur, where we see the last of the Seine 
as it disappears into the Channel. The 
road thither from Trouville winds along 
the shore, which is bordered by steep and 
irregular rocks. In the opposite direction 
a smoother road leads beside the sea past 
a string of bright and coquettish little 
towns, each with its casino, from which 
9 



lively strains of music issue forth. It 
takes a whole day to accomplish this 
excursion pleasantly, driving through 
Villers, Houlgate, Dives, Cabourg, and 
halting at Dives to make acquaintance 
with the excellent dinners which are 
served up at the Hostellerie de Guillaume 
le Conquerant. Dives is one of the nu- 
merous Norman towns which claim to 
have speeded the parting Conqueror on 
his celebrated trip across the Channel. 
But if this distinction is worn rather 
threadbare, and strict authenticity de- 
nies to our Hostellerie the fame of hav- 
ing provided the farewell feast on that 



13° 



TROUVILLE. 



occasion, the homely little Norman inn 
may still thrive on its good cheer of to- 
day and its quaint furniture of antique 
andirons, spits and candlesticks, old 
Rouen faience, Middle-Age tables and 
chairs, wood - carvings, and other curi- 
osities which make its dining-room wor- 
thy of being set down intact in the Hotel 
de Cluny. The owner of these treasures 
of bric-a-brac steadfastly refuses to part 
with a single chip of it, to the despair, 
no doubt, of scores of longing collectors. 
If we allow ourselves to be fascinated 
into making any sojourn in one of these 



smaller watering-places, we should carry 
our entertainment with us or have the 
power of doing without, for each village 
is the resort of a particular coterie who 
rather monopolize its amusement and 
advantages, leaving but a meagre op- 
portunity of diversion for the casual vis- 
itor. If the latter wearies of a tete-a-tete 
with the sea and the game of looking on, 
his only resource will be to drive, at the 
highest speed which his hack will accom- 
plish — about six miles an hour perhaps — • 
back to Trouville. 

Here one is not so dependent on so- 




THE JETTIES. 



ciety to fill up the time : the beach pre- 
sents a kaleidoscope of life and gayety ; 
there are the intellectual resources of the 
books at the bookseller's and the news- 
papers at the Casino ; the consolation of 
an excellent ctdsine is always at hand ; 
there are the excitements of crab-racing, 
of catching shrimps and gathering mus- 
sels. The mussels — called in the Nor- 
man patois cciieux — are found clinging 
to the blackish rocks which are left bare 
at low tide on the sands between Trou- 
ville and Villerville. The mussel is 
scorned in America : let me say a good 
word for him, and testify that, cooked a 



la mariniere, he is well worthy of regard. 
The shrimps found at Trouville are small 
but delicate. They are of the same kind 
as the river-shrimps at New Orleans. It 
is not upon shrimps and mussels that the 
seven hundred native fishermen of Trou- 
ville expend their large energies. They 
have the reputation of being bold and 
active seamen. Despite the invasion of 
fashion which they have submitted to — 
and profited by — for the last forty years, 
they remain the same as when Charles 
Mozin painted them in his Fisherme7t 
drazuing in their Nets, 1834. They ad- 
here to the traditional costume — a striped 



TROUVILLE. 



131 



woollen cap, a suroy or stout jacket of 
tarred cloth, trousers of the same, and 
unmense boots, which they replace when 
on shore by the classic sabots. Every 
night, except on the eve of a fete-day, 
they put out to sea in a fleet of about a 
hundred small barques, and every morn- 
ing, if the weather renders it possible, 
they come in again with the spoils of 
their chaluts, as the large nets are called. 
They seem to have no restlessness or 
desire to escape from the hardships of 
their life. The money which the sum- 
mer transformation of their native town 
brings in to them makes their homes 
somewhat more comfortable and the 
fisl^wives' caps more resplendent with 
laces than before : that is all the change. 
Fishermen they will die, and their sons 
will be fishermen after them. A few 
here and there have sold their fishing- 
boats to go into the lucrative profession 
of bathing - attendants, which enables 
them to enjoy a double portion of cal- 
vados, a popular beverage composed of 
cider and brandy, but the majority stick 
to their chaluts. 

Trouville harbor is formed by the 
mouth of the Toucques. Outside is a 
channel fifty metres wide enclosed be- 
tween two piers — one two hundred and 
twenty, the other four hundred, metres 
long. In i860 a floating dock was built 
at a cost of two and a half millions of 
francs : its sluice is larger than any oth- 
er in the country except that of the new 
dock at Havre. The navigation of the 
port averages about six hundred vessels, 
without counting the fishing-boats. The 
old village of Trouville — the Trouville 
of Mere Auzeraie and Pere Dumas, the 
nucleus of the brilliant seaside city — lies 
close to the harbor, and is to be avoided 
by sensitive nostrils. It has to be gone 
through, however, in order to reach 
Deauville on the other side 01 the riv- 
er, and most of the Trouville people do 
go to Deauville several times a week. 

Deauville is the Faubourg St. Germain 
of Trouville. To cross the bridge over 
the Toucques is like passing into anoth- 
er world — a world wrapped in ennui and 
stately reserve. From the shades of its 
ennui it looks with saturnine disdain at 



the glare and life of its brilliant vis-a-vis. 
Deauville wears an air of blue-blooded 
and ancient respectability rather prema- 
ture, since, in its present stage of exist- 
ence, it is the younger of the two resorts. 
In i860 it was a mere hamlet perched on 
the brow of a hill, with a church whose 
brevet of antiquity, dug up in its parson- 
age garden, consisted of eight hundred 
gold coins bearing the effigy of Philip 
the Fair. A new era dawned in the his- 
tory of the village on the day when the 
due de Morny, after an unsuccessful at- 
tempt to find a villa at Trouville, cross- 
ed the Toucques with a party of friends, 
came to Deauville, saw and acquired 
it. A great speculator as well as a great 
dandy, he no sooner sniffed the air from 
its shores than he scented the chance 
which lay in buying up a quantity of 
that cheap, sandy waste, setting it in 
vogue, and thus raising its value a hun- 
dred-fold. He set the ball of popularity 
in motion by building a villa there him- 
self, the Villa Morny, which changed its 
name to Villa Sesto when the duchesse 
de Morny carried it over, by a second 
marriage, to the duke of that name. A 
rich manufacturer, M. Donon, who had 
joined the scheme, built the next villa, 
which, with its square battlemented tow- 
er, now covered with ivy, is one of the 
most striking on the terrasse at Deau- 
ville. M. John Oliffe, the princess Lise 
Troubetzkoi, Prince Demidoff and others 
followed suit, the fashionable world rally- 
ing to the aid of its ingenious leader with 
no want of alacrity. A race-course was 
started in the meadows by the Toucques, 
liberally endowed by the duke and put 
in the hands of the Jockey Club. Ital- 
ian palaces with their stately colonnades 
and statues, Swiss chalets and Dutch 
cottages, sprang into being as if by en- 
chantment, till the little Norman village 
could boast of a Street of Nations almost 
as curious and varied as that at the Champ 
de Mars last year. 

Everything was done to conceal the nat- 
ural disadvantages of the place. Its pa- 
trons imported vegetable earth and trans- 
planted ready-grown trees to the new gar- 
dens. They built a casino far exceeding 
that of Trouville in beauty and conveni- 



132 



TROUVILLE. 



ence. In time, the due de Morny died, but 
Deauville was already lance : it paused a 
moment to raise a statue to its founder, 
and went on building. It had one enemy, 
however, and that a powerful one. The 
sea looked with sullen disfavor upon the 
new speculation, and droned out an un- 
ceasing homily on the text of laying foun- 
dations upon sand. Year by year it re- 
ceded slowly, till the villas, which in the 
days of the due de Morny had been ca- 
ressed by the tide at high water, became 
in the time of the due de Sesto green 
oases in a desert of yellow sand. Deau- 
ville is now as proverbially dusty as 
Pekin or Boston in an east wind. The 
irate sea has thrown up an immense 
sandbank which chokes the beach and 
leaves the bathers to disport themselves 
in a briny pond not more than three feet 
deep. The bleaching sands stretch drear- 
ily away as far as the eye can reach, with 
no trees, no sunshades or flashing toilettes 
to break their monotony, which is as des- 
olate as that of the Ostende beach in mid- 
winter. 



Once a year, however, the neglected 
watering-place has a sudden renewal of 
animation and brightness. During the 
races it wakes from its sleep and thrills 
again with life. Then the huge hotel 
alongside of the Casino becomes at least 
half full, and, by levying a double tax 
on its customers, contrives to make bus- 
iness pay for the week. A well-known 
"turf-character, M. Joachim Lefebvre, 
paid a thousand francs a day for the priv- 
ilege of sojourning there with his family. 
Some gentlemen who have got tired of 
meeting little bills of this kind prefer to 
visit Deauville in their yachts, and live 
on board during the semaine des cotirses. 
The prince of Wales sailed there in 1877, 
and was carried ashore from his yacht on 
the shoulders of one of his sailors : this 
created a rage for that mode of transport 
which lasted the whole season. The ca- 
bine afiot, with its harnessed quadruped, 
was left high and dry on the sand, while 
the Trouville dandies rode forth into the 
waves on the shoulders of brawny bath- 
ing-attendants. L. Lejeune. 




THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



.1 IW"- 





'j^ 


> 


1 







MONTE SAN SALVAT ORE fLAGO DI I.UGANO 



THE numerous lakes over which the I a striking variety of aspect. Those which 
AIDS throw their long shadows offer | lie to the north of this chain have m gen- 
^ 133 



134 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



eral an aii of rugged and sombre gran- 
deur — a mysterious air, as if accustomed 
to veil their charms in mountain - mist 
and obscure their history with doubtful 
legends — an air, even in midsummer, 
of uncertain warmth, as if conscious 
that peaks of eternal snow and leagues 
of untrodden ice-fields lie between them 
and the sun. The Italian lakes, on the 
other hand, stretching to the south of the 
great mountain-barrier, and shielded by 
it from the cold winds of the German 
plain, join to the wildness of Alpine 
scenery the smile of a genial sky and 
the luxuriance of a southern vegetation. 
They have the prestige, too, of an earli- 
er civilization than their northern neigh- 
bors. For while Lake Leman was still 
reflecting the rafts and the uncouth hel- 
mets of the Helvetians, and while along 
the Austrian lakes the rude Pannonian 
was still hunting the wolf and the bear, 
the borders of the southern lakes, of 
Garda and Como, Lugano and Mag- 
giore, were already covered with vine- 
yards and olive-groves and dotted with 
the luxurious villas of a rich and cultured 
people. Catullus had his home here, and 
the two Plinies and many minor lights 
of Roman letters. Since that day the 
language, the religion, the government 
and the manners of the inhabitants of 
this region have completely changed. 
Only the rocks and mountains, the wa- 
ters and the verdure with which Nature 
yearly renews her youth, remain the 
same. But there is in those permanent 
features a rare beauty which has de- 
lighted travellers of every age and has 
been celebrated in the literature of ev- 
ery country. 

It was toward the end of last October 
that I strolled away from my occupa- 
tions in the French capital to spend a 
fortnight on the Italian lakes. Of the 
many rr utes which from time immemo- 
rial have served for the invasion of Italy 
by the barbarian and the tourist, I chose 
on this occasion the Brenner. Apart 
from the pleasing views it offers, this 
Alpine pass is interesting as being the 
first over which the Romans ventured to 
lead their legions, and the first upon which 
a railway was constructed. I halted at 



Trent, and it was several days before I 
could free myself from the charm of the 
Etruscan city and plan my departure. 

One afternoon I was making inquiries 
at the office of the diligence which runs 
to Riva on the Lake of Garda, when a 
newly-married German couple offered to 
share with me a private carriage which 
they had just hired for the same journey. 
I accepted at once, and in an hour we 
were off. The sober gray suit trimmed 
with green in which Hans was attired 
contrasted oddly with the brilliant pur- 
ple travelling-dress of his fair -haired 
Gretchen. I wondered at first that they 
should have been willing to embarrass 
themselves with a sti-anger, until I per- 
ceived that my presence was no hinder- 
ance at all to their demonstrations of 
affection. We climbed up by a steep 
and winding road to a narrow defile 
which the impetuous Vella almost fills. 
One day, when St. Vigilius was too much 
pressed for time to walk over the moun- 
tain, he wrenched it apart and made 
this passage. The imprint of his holy 
hand is still to be seen on the rock. 
Passing under the cyclopean eyes of 
scores of Austrian cannon which now 
defend this important military position, 
we began to descend the valley of the 
Sarca. It is a wild region, where every 
hamlet has a ruined castle and a legend 
of knight or robber, saint or fairy. The 
picturesque remains of the Madruzzo Cas- 
tle bring to mind the celebrated portraits 
which Titian painted of members of this 
noble family. The artist's colors have 
survived the last of a long line, and will 
doubtless outlive as well the crumbling 
stones of their stronghold. As we skirt- 
ed the little Lake of Dobling its still 
waters reflected rocks and trees, sky and 
mountain, in an enchanting manner. 

"Lovely!" I exclaimed. 

"Lovely!" echoed Gretchen, without 
taking her eyes off Hans. 

"Lovely I" answered Hans, still watch- 
ing the beautiful things reflected in her 
eyes. 

After crossing the rapid Sarca and 
traversing a desolate tract where rocks 
of every size, fallen from the overhang- 
ing mountain, lie strewn about in chaotic 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



135 




136 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



confusion, we reached Arco. This sunny 
village nestles at the foot of an immense 
detached boulder whose dizzy summit is 
crowned by mediaeval battlements and 
towers. Home fit only for birds of prey, 
this castle was long the nest of a family 
of robbers. Scarcely had we lost in the 
distance this greatest wonder of the val- 
ley when a sharjj turn of the road brought 
Riva and the Lake of Garda full in view. 
It was a prospect of singular beauty. 
The sun had already set except on the 
highest peaks, and a part of the lake 
was wrapt in purple shadows. Another 
part, however, was as clear and light 
as the sky above it, and all aglow with 
the images of crimson and orange-tinted 
clouds. A shrill cry — of delight, I thought 
— burst from Gretchen's lips. I was mis- 
taken. Hans had pulled off too rudely 
a ring from her finger, and the fair one 
was in tears. 

Half an hour more of fast driving 
brought us to Riva, which we entered 
by the Porta San Michele, one of the 
four ancient and imposing gateways of 
which the town boasts. Two good inns 
offered their hospitality. I chose the 
Golden Sun, but my romantic compan- 
ions preferred the Garden. The land- 
lord informed me that the two steamers 
which daily make the tour of the lake, 
one along the eastern and one along 
the western shore, would both start be- 
fore sunrise. Unwilling to leave Riva so 
soon, I determined to lie over one day. 
My windows overlooked the beach, and 
I fell asleep to the monotonous plash of 
the wave and to the buzz of noisy talk 
in the streets, which continued to a late 
hour. 

In the morning I go out to see the 
local sights. In ten minutes I am sat- 
isfied that there is nothing here in the 
way of painting or architecture worth 
seeing. But if these are wanting, there 
are plenty of curious narrow streets, 
where the houses lean over the way 
toward each other in a friendly but most 
unstable manner ; there are gardens of 
blooming oleanders ; there are gaudy 
house -fronts, whose frescoes seem to 
have waged a hard battle with Time. 
Above all, there is the animation of the 



port and the free, happy, open-air hfe 
on the beach and in the two large 
squares. Here every face, every cos- 
tume, every word, every gesture, is Ital- 
ian. The harmony between the land- 
scape and the people is perfect, save 
that over La Rocca, the fortress on the 
shore, waves the black -and -yellow flag 
of Franz Joseph, and that here and there 
an Austrian uniform mars the picture, 
and that now and then harsh German 
accents fall on the ear like a discord in a 
fine strain of music. An unpleasant fact 
is forced upon the attention. The home 
of these Italians is as yet no part of It- 
aly : Riva and a small portion of the 
lake still belong to Austria. 

In the afternoon I take tl>e famous 
walk to the Ponale waterfall. The road 
thither ascends continually. It has been 
skilfully led along the ledges of a pre- 
cipitous cliff which borders the lake to the 
west of Riva, arwi occasionally pierces the 
mountain by short tunnels. After pass- 
ing through the third tunnel I come to a 
wooden bridge, under which the Ponale 
dashes just before taking its final leap 
into the lake. The frail structure on 
which I stand trembles and is wet with 
spray, and the air is full of the roar and 
gurgle of the waters. But for me the 
main charm of the walk is not the sight 
of this noisy torrent, but the superb view 
of Riva that I get on my way back upon 
issuing from one of the tunnels. The 
eye, accustomed for a moment to the 
darkness, is all the more sensitive to the 
rich soft light which bathes the moun- 
tains and the town. A gentle breeze 
ripples the lake, and the brightly-paint- 
ed houses that fringe the beach are seen 
indistinctly in the water, where they look 
like a line of waving banners. Half a 
dozen steeples and bell - towers rise 
gracefully from among the roofs, and 
their presence explains the surprising 
frequency with which the hours of the 
night are struck. From this height I 
can distinguish the low walls which sur- 
round the town and compress its four 
thousand inhabitants into the area of a 
small quadrilateral. But Riva, though 
still fortified, has a thorough look of 
peaceful commercial prosperity, and has 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



137 



quite laid aside the warlike air she wore 
in the Middle Ages. In those troubled 
times this town saw countless wars and 
sustained many sieges ; belonged now to 



Venice, now to Milan, now to Austria ; 
and at times was independent and able 
to defy even a bull of the pope or a re- 
script of the emperor. 




Two incidents of these wars of the 
fifteenth century deserve mention. Pic- 
cinino, a leader of mercenary troops in 
the Milanese service, was besieged in 



Riva by Francis Sforza, who, thirsting 
for the blood of his adversary, had of- 
fered a large reward for his head. Pic- 
cinino, seeing that the town was hard 



138 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



pressed and likely to fall, thought it 
wise to make his escape. First, he had 
it given out that he had died of the plague : 
then had himself sewed up in a sack and 
let down by a rope from the town-wall. 
There a soldier took the sack on his back 
and carried it through the enemy's lines, 
ringing a bell all the while to warn every- 
body to keep out of the way and avoid 
contagion. The ruse succeeded, and be- 
fore it was found out the cunning condot- 
tiere was out of Sforza's reach. 

It was on another occasion, when this 
same Piccinino held all the lower part of 
the lake and the Venetians had access 
only to the upper part, that the other in- 
cident occurred, Hannibal crossed the 
Alps with elephants and Napoleon with 
cannon, but Sorbolo, a native of Candia, 
in some sort outdid them both, for he 
dragged a whole fleet over a mountain 
which is almost as high as the great St. 
Bernard Pass. He brought thirty -one 
Venetian ships as far as he could up the 
Adige, and then, with the aid of two thou- 
sand oxen, hauled them in fifteen days 
over Monte Baldo and let them down by 
ropes into the lake. 

Torbole, the village where this costly 
enterprise ended, is about three miles 
from Riva. It is much visited — by epi- 
cureans for its good fish, by artists for its 
picturesque surroundings, and by enthu- 
siastic climbers, who there begin the as- 
cent of Monte Baldo. 

Long before daybreak the next morn- 
ing the great red and green eyes of two 
small steamers are looking around for 
passengers, and their whistles screeching 
that it is time to get up. I have chosen 
the boat which skirts the western bank. 
It starts an hour later than the other, but 
it is not yet sunrise when we push off. 
The after-deck is thinly peopled, chiefly 
by tourists, but the fore-deck, where the 
seats are cheaper, is crowded. We pass 
by the tumbling and roaring Ponale, and 
before many minutes we cross the invis- 
ible boundary-line between Austria and 
Italy. The motion of the boat is hardly 
felt, for we are sailing with a strong cur- 
rent. The high peaks to the north have 
already caught the first rays of the sun : 
masses of white vapor which have been 



sleeping in the mountain -hollows are 
roused up and put on a rosy tint. The 
sky is without a cloud, the lake without 
a ripple : we seem to be floating in mid- 
air. 

Limone, the first stopping-place, is quite 
given up to the culture of the fruit from 
which it takes its name. A row of cy- 
presses gives a gloomy air to the village 
and awakens a melancholy recollection. 
It was here that, in 1810, Andreas Hofer, 
the Tyrolese patriot, was arrested by or- 
der of Napoleon. A boat conveyed him 
to the prison of Peschiera, and he was 
soon afterward shot in the citadel of 
Mantua. 

We next stop before Tremosine, a vil- 
lage perched high up on a rock, and to 
which no visible road leads. On the other 
side of the lake, which is here narrow, the 
white houses of Malcesine cluster around 
the base of an imposing castle. This 
stronghold of the Middle Ages, one of 
the few in this neighborhood which Time 
has not been suffered to destroy, was built 
by Charlemagne, and was formerly the 
boundary between Austria and the Vene- 
tian territory ; but it is chiefly interesting 
from an adventure which here befell 
Goethe. He had sat down in the court- 
yard, and was sketching one of the quaint 
old towers, when the crowd that had gath- 
ered around him, taking him for a spy, 
fell on him, tore his drawings to pieces 
and sent for the authorities to arrest him. 
Fortunately, there was in the village a 
man who had worked in Frankfort and 
knew the poet by sight, and through his 
influence Goethe was set free. 

Behind Malcesine the ground rises 
slowly in gentle undulations until the 
long ridge of Monte Baldo, its summit 
bare, its sides clothed with chestnut and 
myrtle and scarred by deep ravines, 
closes the view. A strong north breeze, 
which the captain calls the sover, has 
sprung up. It swells the sails of the 
little barks that dot the lake, and under 
its influence the water takes a hue of 
pure ultramarine. Keeping along, close 
under the wild and steep bank, we ar- 
rive at Gargnano, the warmest spot in 
Northern Italy and the favorite resort 
of the Brescian aristocracy. Low hills. 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



139 




140 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



covered with lemon-groves and fig trees, 
form the background of this lovely vil- • 
lage, while gay villas and beautiful gar- 
dens line the shore. Not far away, at the 
water's edge, a small column is erected 
opposite the spot where six members of 
the same family perished when, in 1866, 
an Italian gunboat was sunk by the Aus- 
trian fleet. 

The lake widens fast as we advance. 
Suddenly the bay of Salo opens to the 
right, and we enter it to search out the 
little town of that name, which is quite 
hidden among orange and mulberry 
trees. It is ten o'clock when, emerging 
from this bay, we pass through a narrow 
strait between a group of islands and the 
mainland. The breeze gradually dies 
away, a few minutes of perfect calm 
succeed, and then fitful gusts agitate 
the surface of the lake. 

"II lago si volta!" exclaims the cap- 
tain ; and the meaning of the phrase is 
soon evident, for the south wind sets 
in strongly and the color of the water 
changes, first to the deepest possible 
blue, and then to a bright grass-green. 
A burly priest at my side tells me that 
this singular phenomenon occurs in fine 
weather at the same hour every day. It 
is a lake in the morning, he says, but a 
sea in the afternoon ; and, quoting Vir- 
gil's famous line, 

Fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino, 

he assures me that in violent storms he 
has seen the waves run as high here as 
in any part of the Mediterranean. His 
conversation occupies my attention for 
the rest of the journey. Pointing to the 
town of Garda, faintly seen on the op- 
posite shore, he tells me, among other 
things, that he was born there ; that in 
the castle there the virtuous Adelaide, 
queen of Italy, was imprisoned ; and that 
the lake, called Benacus by the Ro- 
mans, assumed its modern name some 
centuries ago, when it fell under the 
dominion of the counts of Garda. Just 
behind Garda is the village where Na- 
poleon gained one of his most brilliant 
victories and Massena the title of duke 
of Rivoli. 

We are soon abreast of the peninsula 



of Sermione, on which stood the house of 
Catullus. This long and narrow strip of 
land, in shape like an arrow, divides the 
southern end of the lake into two bays, 
on each of which is situated an import- 
ant town. Peschiera, to the east, is one 
corner of the famous Italian Quadrilat- 
eral : to the west lies Desenzano, toward 
which our steamer is heading — one of 
the chief grain -markets of Lombardy. 
Midway on Sermione is a castle with 
three picturesque towers built by the 
Scaligers, and at the very end of the 
peninsula are extensive Roman ruins, 
now known as the Grotto of Catullus. 
At the sight of these venerable arches 
the priest grows enthusiastic. 

" Quam te libenter, quamque laetus inviso ! 
Salve, O venusta Sirmio !" 

he exclaimed. "Virgil visited these 
shores : Dante, when an exile in Vero- 
na, accepting the 

cortesia del gran Lombardo 
Che'n su la scala porta il santo uccello, 

made frequent excursions upon and 
around our lake and drew many pic- 
tures of its scenery. But Catullus lived 
here : this was his home. How often 
has his eye rested on each point of this 
wonderful landscape, the mountains, the 
valleys, this broad expanse of v/ater, the 
bold headlands and the curving beach ! 
How often has he watched with delight 
the changes which the hours and sea- 
sons work in their appearance ! Here 
he sung his love for Lesbia in words that 
still thrill us, and here he mourned the 
death of her sparrow. His whole poetry 
is but the reflection of the beauty which 
Nature daily spread before him." 

Scarcely are the ruins out of sight 
when we enter the harbor of Desen- 
zano. After landing I have just time to 
take lunch and to cast a hurried glance 
over certain Roman antiquities and rel- 
ics of the Stone Age found here, before 
the train starts, and carries me off with 
it toward Lecco, on the Lake of Como. 

The environs of Lecco are not want- 
ing in beauty. The swift Adda rushes 
by, bearing off the clear waters of the 
lake ; to the east a fantastic mountain, 
the Resegone or "Great Saw," lifts up 
its long teeth against the sky ; to the 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



141 




STREET IN TREMEZZO. 



west, across the water and at the en- 
trance of the Val Madrera, the village 
of Malgrate offers a charming prospect. 
The town itself is given up to iron-foun- 
dries, cotton -mills and silk -looms, and 
has little of interest to detain the travel- 
ler except perhaps a museum of instru- 
ments of torture. But Manzoni, who 



placed in this neighborhood some of 
the best scenes of his Proniessi Sposi, has 
endeared the spot for ever to the literary 
world, and many a tourist now spends a 
day in Lecco, less to inspect its manufac- 
tories or to satisfy his eye with a pleas- 
ing landscape than to search out in the 
streets and the market-place counter- 



142 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



parts of the characters of the famous 
novel. 

On the map the Lake of Como looks 
like an inverted and somewhat irregu- 
lar Y, or, still more, like a child's first 
attempt to draw a man, who without 
arms and with unequal legs is running 
off to the left. Just at the moment his 
picture is taken he has one foot on Lecco 
and the other on the town of Como. The 
hilly district between the two southern 
branches of the lake is known as the 
Brianza, and is noted for its bracing air, 
its fertile soil and the coolness of its 
springs. The Brianza ends at the mid- 
dle of the lake in a dolomite promontory 
several hundred feet high, on whose west- 
ern slope lies the village of Bellaggio. 
This point commands the finest views 
in every direction : it is near the most 
interesting of those villas which are open 
to the public, and it abounds in good ho- 
tels. To visit Bellaggio is therefore the 
aim of every tourist who passes this way. 
My journey thither it is best to pass over 
in silence, for I see nothing, and what I 
feel is indescribable. I am shut up dur- 
ing a furious storm of wind and rain in 
the cabin of a little steamer which is as 
nervous and uneasy as if on the Atlantic. 
I am told, however, that in this part of 
the lake the banks are lofty and steep, 
and frequently barren, and that there are 
marble-quarries to be seen, and cascades 
and houses and villages crowning the 
cliffs. • 

On arriving at Bellaggio, I take lodg- 
ing in the Villa Serbelloni, one of the 
many magnificent residences which pov- 
erty has induced the Italian nobles to 
put into the hands of hotel-keepers. The 
house stands high up on the very end of 
the promontory, and adjoining it is an 
extensive park, on which the ruins of a 
robber's castle look down. The pano- 
rama which on a fine day spreads it- 
self out before one who walks in these 
grounds is of singular beauty. The 
northern arm of the lake, wider and 
more regular than the others, opens up 
a long vista of headlands and bays and 
red -roofed villages as far as where Do- 
maso peeps out from a grove of giant 
elms. Beyond, the view is bounded by 



the snow-covered Alps. Close at hand, 
near Varenna, the Fiume di Latte, a 
milk-white waterfall, leaps down from 
a height of a thousand feet. Toward 
Lecco huge walls of barren rock arise 
and wrap every thing near them in som- 
bre shadows. Toward Como the tran- 
quil water is shut in by hills and low 
mountains, whose flowing lines blend 
gracefully together. Some of these 
slopes are dark with pines, some are 
gray with the olive, some are garlanded 
with vines which hang from tree to tree, 
while others are clothed in a rich green 
foliage, amid which glistens the golden 
fruit of the orange and the lemon. The 
banks are lined with bright gardens and 
noble parks and villas, whose lawns run 
down to the water's edge and are adorn- 
ed with fountains, statues, masses of bril- 
liant flowers and clumps of tall trees. 
Above is a sky of Italian blue, and be- 
low is a crystal mirror in which every 
charm of the landscape is repeated. 
The impression made by all this loveli- 
ness is increased by the air of happiness 
that pervades the spot. It is the haunt 
of the rich, the gay, the newly-married : 
music and song, laughter and mirthful 
talk, are the most familiar sounds. The 
smile of Nature seems here to warm men's 
hearts and drive away the cares they have 
brought with them. 

It is on this site that Pliny the Young- 
er is believed to have had the villa which 
he called Cothurnus or "Tragedy." The 
present building is several centuries old. 
Tradition relates that a certain countess, 
one of its first occupants, had a habit of 
throwing her lovers down the cliff when 
she was tired of them. Making this de- 
lightful abode iny head-quarters, I spend 
a week, partly in agreeable sight-seeing 
and partly in still more agreeable idle- 
ness. I visit villas, towers, fossil -beds 
and waterfalls — in short, everything in- 
teresting and accessible — now going on 
foot, now borne from point to point in 
one of the sharp-prowed rowboats which 
are in use here, and now taking the 
steamer up to Colico or down to Como 
and back. 

At half an hour's walk from here, on 
the Lecco arm of the lake, is the Villa 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



143 




144 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



Giulia. It was the favorite residence of 
the late Leopold, king of Belgium, and, 
although now a hotel, it is worth a visit 
for the beautiful grounds that surround 
it and for the charming view it affords 
in the direction of Bellaggio. It is here 
that, while strolling in the garden one 
afternoon, secretly coveting the wonder- 
ful camellias and hortensias, I catch the 
whisper of familiar voices, and stumble 
suddenly upon an arbor where, under 
the shadow of countless roses, I descry 
a gray-and-green arm around a purple 
waist. The moment I am seen there is 
a scream and a flutter, and then a cordial 
recognition. Hans and Gretchen tell me 
they are making the same tour that I am, 
and they hope to meet me again. 

Much closer at hand, on the Como 
arm, is the Villa Melzi. It was built in 
1810, in plain but pure style and at great 
cost, for that Melzi who was publicly 
embraced by Bonaparte at Lyons and 
made by him vice-president of the Cis- 
alpine Republic, and afterward duke of 
Lodi. The interior of the villa is rich- 
ly decorated, elegantly furnished and 
adorned with objects of art of every 
kind. One of the duke's ancestors was 
the pupil and friend of Leonardo da 
Vinci, and succeeded him as master in 
the school he had founded. Four mono- 
chromes illustrate this interesting remi- 
niscence. Then there is a bust of Michel 
Angelo by himself, and various works in 
marble 'by those two friends and gen- 
erous rivals, Canova and Thorwaldsen. 
The most remarkable painting is a por- 
trait of Bonaparte, taken from life in 1 802 
by Appiani. The First Consul of France 
and President of Italy was then thirty- 
three years old. Richly attired, but pale 
and thin, he rests his hand upon the 
map of Italy, the scene of his greatest 
exploits, and fixes his piercing eye full 
on the spectator with a glance that recalls 
the past and seems to predict the future. 
In the garden the most showy flowers 
and the rarest trees from every clime 
are tastefully disposed, while here and 
there the whiteness of a marble statue 
contrasts pleasingly with the green of 
the surrounding vegetation. The bust 
of Alfieri occupies the highest point of 



the grounds ; those of Madame LetiMa 
and Josephine are half hidden by en- 
croaching vines ; Dante and Beatrice, 
standing together, overlook the lake. 
At the end of the garden, under the 
dome of a small chapel encircled by 
tall cypresses, rest the ashes of the duke 
of Lodi. His grandson is the present 
owner of the villa, but he spends here 
hardly a fortnight in the year. The por- 
ter says that his master finds more to 
amuse him in his town-palaces, of which 
he has half a dozen in different parts of 
Italy ; but the gardener tells me that this 
spot awakens too painful memories of a 
wife tenderly loved and early lost. 

Across the lake from here is the Villa 
Carlotta, called after its former owner, 
the princess Charlotte of Prussia. Step- 
ping out of his boat, the visitor ascends 
the marble stairs which lead up from the 
shore. After a few steps across the gar- 
den he reaches the villa, passes through 
a porch fragrant with jasmine, and is at 
once ushered into a small room where 
are some of the finest works of modern 
sculpture. Canova's Mars and Venus 
and Palamedes are here, and they are 
most admirable, but they are surpass- 
ed in charm by the famous group in 
which Psyche is reclining and Cupid 
bending fondly over her. The best 
piece of the collection is the frieze that 
runs round the room. It is from the 
chisel of Thorwaldsen, and represents 
Alexander the Great's triumphal entry 
into Babylon. Full of the beauty of 
youth, the conqueror advances in his 
chariot ; Victory comes to meet him ; 
vanquished nations bring presents ; 
while behind him follow his brave 
Greeks on horse and on foot, dragging 
along with them the prisoners and the 
booty. The subject was suggested by 
Napoleon, who intended the work for 
the Ouirinal. It is in high relief, and 
in general effect resembles strongly the 
frieze with which Phidias encircled the 
Parthenon. It is a pity that these mas- 
terpieces are shown first, for after seeing 
them one does not fully enjoy the statues 
and paintings in the other rooms. 

Two hours may be delightfully spent 
in making the journey by steamboat from 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



145 



4, 











a 



3 -^H ^^- f "^ 



'*" 



1^-"^^ 












r'©'^ 





146 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



Bellaggio to Como. Here the lake is so 
narrow and winding that it seems to be a 
river. At every moment bold mountain- 
spurs project into the water, appearing to 
bar all passage, and one's curiosity is 
continually excited to find the outlet. 
The views shift and change with sur- 
prising quickness, for the boat stops at 
a dozen little towns on the way, and for 
this purpose keeps crossing and recross- 
ing from shore to shore. 

The quaint village of Tremezzo is one 
of the first stopping-places. It is built 
on the side of a steep hill, and seems to 
be in constant danger of slipping down. 
Soon the island of Comacina is passed, 
now a barren rock with only a small 
chapel upon it, but once the site of an 
important town and fortress. Farther 
on, close to the water's edge, is a pyra- 
mid which an obscure Austrian, emu- 
lous of the long -lasting fame of the 
Egyptian kings, caused to be erected to 
his own memory. To the right rises the 
lofty Monte Bisbino, the weather-prophet 
of the neighborhood, for when he puts on 
his cap of clouds it is sure to rain. 

Se il Bisbin mette il cappello, 
Corri a prendere I'ombrello, 

says a local proverb. From this point on 
to Como both shores are studded with 
villas of every size and style, but all, 
with one exception, bright and gay. A 
rich milliner built one ; a great dancer 
another; a third belongs to Madame 
Musard, the owner of the open-air con- 
cert-grounds at Paris. One was the re- 
treat of Judith Pasta, the famous singer 
for whom Bellini composed Norma and 
La Sonnambula ; in another Bonaparte 
lodged ; another was for many years the 
home of his great-niece, the charming 
Madame Rattazzi ; in another lived the 
unfortunate Queen Caroline, wife of 
George IV. The only one among them 
all that looks gloomy and forbidding is 
the Villa PUniana, built three centuries 
ago by Count Anguissola, one of the four 
assassins of Duke Farnese. The name 
it bears was given to it because it stands 
near a curious spring minutely described 
in one of Pliny's letters. 

Como itself is a quiet, sleepy, town. 
It is justly proud of having given birth 



to the two Plinies and to Volta. The 
statue of the electrician stands in the 
middle of a grass -grown square : those 
of the great naturalist and his accom- 
plished nephew sit in marble arm-chairs 
on each side of the cathedral-door. With 
the ruined castle of Baradello, which 
looks down on Como, is connected the 
story of a dreadful retribution. In the 
thirteenth century the archbishop Otto 
Visconti, having won a battle and taken 
his rival, Napo della Torre, prisoner, put 
him naked into an iron cage which he 
suspended from the projecting parapet 
of this castle. After enduring for a few 
days the jeers of the populace and the 
pangs of hunger, the unhappy man put 
an end to his life by beating his head 
against the bars. One's pity for his suf- 
ferings is lessened on learning that he 
once had a friend of Visconti's in his 
power and kept him shut up in a wood- 
en cage under the steps of the town- 
hall at Milan for twelve years. 

From Bellaggio to Luino, on the Lago 
Maggiore, by way of the Swiss town of 
Lugano, is a short day's journey, thanks 
to the admirable combination of steam- 
boats and diligences. That part of the 
Lake of Lugano which is traversed is at 
first wild and sombre, with inaccessible 
cliffs rising on either hand. By degrees 
the landscape softens, and on turning a 
point Lugano comes in sight, nestling in 
a hollow between two mountains. One 
of these, the Monte San Salvatore, has a 
most graceful outline : it is three thou- 
sand feet high, beautifully wooded, of 
easy ascent, and is said to offer from its 
summit an enchanting prospect. But 
neither its charms nor those of the town 
at its foot induce me to tarry. I hasten 
on to Luino, gathering on the way, from 
my seat on top of the diligence, a bewil- 
dering series of mountain -pictures, with 
which mingles the memory of many a 
smiling village and many a lovely garden 
— of a pure air and a perfumed breeze, 
with here and there a pair of bright eyes 
or a pretty face or a band of sun-brown- 
ed children hanging on to the coach be- 
hind like a cluster of bees. 

Luino is neither pretty nor clean, nor 
has it a single monument or inscription 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



147 



to tell that Bernardo Luini was born 
here, the celebrated painter whose fres- 
coes adorn many churches and monas- 
teries in the neighborhood. Tired with 
the day's travel, 1 climb at an early hour 
into an enormous bed of state which my 
landlord has assigned to me and try to 
forget its grandeur in sleep. I lie awake, 
however, a great part of the night, listen- 
ing perforce to a quarrel among certain 
stage-drivers who have taken their stand 
under my window. It is carried on by 
six voices at once in angry tones, but al- 
ways in polite language. Amiable race ! 
Where a Celt or an Anglo - Saxon would 
curse and swear, an Italian contents 
himself with crying out " Pazienza ! 
pazienza!" 

In the morning the arguments of an 
honest - looking boatman persuade me 
not to wait for the steamer, but to take 
a small boat with four rowers down to 
Stresa. Once afloat, it is easy to see 
why this lake has received the name of 
Maggiore. Though really smaller than 
the Lake of Garda, it looks larger, for it 
is in general wider, and there are no 
precipitious banks to confine the view. 
The mountains that enclose it are low 
and retreating, and the eye sweeps over 
a vast and varied horizon. At my re- 
quest we gain at once the opposite shore. 
On an island opposite Cannero the re- 
mains of two dismantled castles trace 
grotesque silhouettes against the sky. 
One of the boatmeii tells me the story 
of five robber-brothers named Mazzardi 
who lived there long ago with their fol- 
lowers and ravaged the surrounding 
country with impunity. He follows this 
up with other legends of the lake, and 
dwells especially upon the happy case 
of a certain Albert Besozzi, a rich prof- 
ligate, likewise of ancient memory, who, 
being thoroughly frightened one day by 
a narrow escape from shipwreck on these 
waters, dedicated the worthless remain- 
der of his life to Heaven and finished his 
days in a hermit's cell. 

Meanwhile, we have turned into the 
beautiful bay of Pallanza, and my com- 
panions cease rowing for a while to re- 
fresh themselves with bread and wine. 
The steamer comes along, touches at the 



Pallanza wharf and puts off again. Im- 
mediately afterward there iff a great com- 
motion. A woman in purple on the deck 
of the boat is frantically imploring the 
captain to stop, while a young man on 
the pier seems to be preparing to jump 
into the water. Hans has stepped ashore 
to buy fruit, and has been left behind. 
The captain is inexorable, the steamer 
keeps on its course, and every moment 
the breach becomes wider between those 
whom no man should put asunder. 1 
take the unhappy man into my boat, and 
by pulling in a straight line for Stresa we 
arrive there almost as soon as the steamer, 
which has followed the wide curve of the 
bay. What appears in the distance to be 
a singular monument on the end of the 
Stresa wharf turns out on nearer approach 
to be Gretchen standing on a trunk and 
drying her handkerchief in the breeze. 

The four islands that we have passed 
on the way are known as the Borromean 
Islands, because they belong for the most 
part to the rich and powerful Borromeo 
family. The rare beauty of one of them 
makes it the wonder of the lake. It was 
toward the middle of the seventeenth 
century that Count Vitaliano Borromeo, 
finding himself the possessor of almost 
the whole of this island, which was then 
a barren rock, resolved to make it his 
residence, and to surround himself with 
gardens that should rival those of Armi- 
da. For more than twenty years archi- 
tects, gardeners, sculptors and painters 
labored to give material form to the 
count's fancies. A spacious palace was 
erected on one end of the island : on the 
other ten lofty terraces rose one above 
the other, like the hanging-gardens of 
Babylon. The rock was covered with 
good soil, and the choicest trees and 
shrubs were brought from every land. 
Only evergreens, however, were admit- 
ted into this Eden, for the count would 
have about him no sign of winter or 
death. In 1671 the work was finished. 
The island was called Isabella, after the 
count's mother — a name which has since, 
by a happy corruption, become changed 
to Isola Bella. 

It is on a sunny afternoon that I direct 
my bark toward the "Beautiful Island." 



148 



THE ITALIAN LAKES. 



I look on the landing-place with respect, 
for it is worn by the footsteps of six gen- 
erations of travellers. The interior of 
the palace, which I visit first, is fitted up 
with princely magnificence and is rich 
in art -treasures. Mementoes of kings 
and queens who have accepted hospi- 
tality here are^ shown, and a bed in 
which Bonaparte once slept. There is 
a chapel where a priest daily says mass ; 
a throne -room, as in the palaces of the 
Spanish grandees ; and a gallery with 
numerous paintings. A whole suite of 
rooms is given up to the works of Peter 
Molyn, a Dutch artist, fitly nicknamed 
"Sir Tempest." This erratic man, hav- 
ing killed his wife to marry another wo- 
man, was condemned to death. He es- 
caped from prison, however, found an 
asylum here, and in return for the pro- 
tection of the Borromeo of that day he 
adorned his walls with more than fifty 
landscapes and pastoral scenes. 

The garden betrays the epoch at which 
it was laid out. Prim parterres, where 
masses of brilliant flowers bloom all the 
year round, are enclosed by walks along 
which orange trees and myrtles have 
been bent and trimmed into whimsical 
patterns. There are dark and winding 
alleys of cedars where at every turn 
some surprise is planned. Here is a 
grotto made of shells — there an obe- 
lisk, or a mosaic column, or a horse of 
bronze, or a fountain of clear water in 
which the attendant tritons and nymphs 
would doubtless disport were they not 
petrified into marble. There is one 
lovely spot where, at the middle point 
of a rotunda, a large statue of Hercules 
stands finely out against a background 
of dark foliage. Other Olympians keep 
him company and calmly eye the visitor 
from their painted niches. Not far from 
there is a venerable laurel on which Bo- 
naparte cut the word "Battaglia" a few 
days before the battle of Marengo. The 
B is still plainly visible. 

Pines and firs planted thickly along 
the northern side of the island defend 
it from cold winds. In the sunny nooks 
of the terraces the delicate lemon tree 
bears abundant fruit and the oleander 
grows to a size which it attains nowhere 



else in Europe. The tea -plant from 
China, the banana from Africa and the 
sugar-cane from Mississippi flourish side 
by side : the camphor tree distils its aro- 
matic essence and the magnolia loads 
the air with perfume. The cactus and 
the aloe border walks over which the 
bamboo bends and throws its grateful 
shade. Turf and flower-beds carpet 
each terrace, and a tapestry of ivy and 
flowering vines conceals the walls of 
the structure. From the summit a huge 
stone unicorn looks down upon his mas- 
ter's splendid domain. He overlooks 
also a corner of the island where his 
master's authority is not acknowledged. 
The small patch of land on which the 
Dolphin Hotel stands has for many cen- 
turies descended from father to son in a 
plebeian family, nor have the Borromeos 
ever been able to buy it. They have to 
endure the inn, therefore, as Frederick 
endured the mill at San-Souci and Na- 
poleon the house he could not buy at 
Paris. 

At last the moment comes when I 
must quit Stresa, not, however, before I 
have visited the remaining islands and 
other points of interest. The steamer 
puts off, and soon separates me from the 
landscape that has been my delight for 
three days — the blue bay with its verdant 
banks, the softly-shaded hills which en- 
close it, the snow-covered chain of the 
Simplon in the background. As we ap- 
proach the southern end of the lake a 
colossal bronze statue of San Carlo Bor- 
romeo on the summit of a hill near Aro- 
na comes into sight. From head to foot 
the saint measures little less than eighty 
feet, and the pedestal on which he stands 
adds to his height half as much more. 
His face is turned toward Arona, his na- 
tive town, and one hand is extended to 
bless it. With my glass I descry a party 
of liliputian tourists engaged in examin- 
ing this great Gulliver. Most of them 
are satisfied when they have reached the 
top of the pedestal and have ranged them- 
selves in a row on one foot of the statue. 
Others, more daring, climb up by a lad- 
der to the saint's knee, where they disap- 
pear through an aperture in the skirt of 
his robe. From this point the ascent con- 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



149 



tinues inside of the statue, by means of 
iron bars, to the head, in which four per- 
sons can conveniently remain at once. 

At Arona the railway-station and the 
wharf are near each other, and in a few 
minutes after I have landed an express- 
train starts and bears me away from the 
region of the Italian lakes. When we 
have passed the last houses of Arona 



and gained the open plain the statue of 
the great Borromeo with his outstretched 
arm comes again for a few moments into 
view. Perhaps the uncertain light of 
evening and the jolting of the train de- 
ceive me, but I fancy that the good old 
saint is waving his hand in the familiar 
Italian way, as much as to say, "A ri- 
vederci !" Robert A. McLeod. 



/f.Q>^ n 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 




ON THE RIVIERA. 



A THOUSAND miles in six-and-thirty 
hours and the blue Mediterranean 
and sunshine in exchange for London 
fog and soot ! The temptation was irre- 
sistible to the Chancery barrister, wea- 
ry of stuffy courts and sunless cham- 
bers ; it fascinated the Eton assistant- 
master, brain-misty with boys' multifari- 
ous blunderings ; and the very next morn- 
ing after courts and schools were closed 
for Easter vacation the pair were seated 
in the early continental mail from Victo- 
ria Station, bound for Mentone. Paris 
is not reached till half-past six p. m., and 



the Marseilles express leaves the Gare 
de Lyons at a quarter after seven ; but 
the doiianiers are merciful to us, and our 
cocker \)n'^\ so we just catch the train, 
happily forgetful, in the excitement of 
the start, that the prosaic but generally 
necessary ceremony of dinner has some- 
how got crowded out of the day's pro- 
gramme, and that a night and a long 
morning lie between us and the flesh- 
pots of Marseilles. 

Day is just breaking when we draw 
up at Lyons, and the passengers uncurl 
themselves and tumble sleepily out of 



15° 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



their carriages to scarify their throats 
with scalding chocolate or coffee. In 
vain the manager of the refreshment- 
room blandly reiterates the assurance — 
a perfectly true one — that nobody need 
hurry. Three minutes of painful deglu- 
tition at the cost of a franc a head (what 
a Tom Tiddler's Ground one of those 
large French station - restaurants must 
be !), and the carriages are full again, 
and our ulsters, cloaks, plaids and wraps 
of all sorts begin to open and disclose 
fellow-passengers to one another. This 
morning the predominant element is mil- 
itary — a cluster of smooth-faced youths, 
gay in red and blue uniforms, on their 
way from some military school to pass 
six months in barracks at Toulon. Speed- 
ing due south alongside the brown Rhone, 
we are perceptibly and visibly passing by 
rapid stages into a warmer climate. First, 
mulberry-plantations, the nurseries of the 
Lyons silk-trade ; then olives — starveling 
specimens the northernmost ones, but 
gradually increasing in size and num- 
ber as the Mediterranean is approach- 
ed ; and soon, when Marseilles has been 
reached and passed, the orange, the 
pomegranate and the aloe. 

Lazily, all a long afternoon, the train 
dawdles eastward, now skirting the pla- 
cid sea and playing hide-and-seek with 
it through a bewildering series of little 
tunnels — now making a short cut across 
a peninsula and giving the bent farm- 
laborers an excuse for the elevating rec- 
reation of a stare. Only a two minutes' 
halt at Frejus, but it well deserves at least 
a day to itself. In the days when the ma- 
sonry of that graceful amphitheatre hard 
by the station was new, Forum Julii was 
a port that had received those five hun- 
dred galleys which Augustus took at Ac- 
tium, and as little dreamed of being silt- 
ed up into an obscure inland town as of 
having its name shrivelled into Frejus. 
But your modern traveller is a Gallio 
in Old -World matters of this kind, and 
steams on with a light heart to a more 
congenial halting -place a score of miles 
farther on, where there are no associa- 
tions older than Lord Brougham, who 
may fairly be said to have invented 
Cannes. Less than half a century ago 



the place was an insignificant fishing- 
village, and now a costly crowd of trim- 
gardened villas in every style of inap- 
propriate architecture, Gothic, Doric and 
Castellated, jostle one another jealous- 
ly, backed up by a satellite town of ho- 
tels and pettsions and doctors. Bright 
and pretty it looks in the light of the 
westering sun, and a tempting resting- 
place indeed after a long, dusty journey 
in the train. So, obviously, thinks that 
plethoric little plutocrat travelling with 
his young wife in the solitary state of a 
reserved coupe under the dominion of a 
sallow-faced courier. But his pleadings 
are in vain : the courier has arranged 
otherwise, and is sole master of the plans, 
the purse and — the language ; so his em- 
ployer humbly falls back upon petition- 
ing to be allowed a glass of fruit -syrup 
(which the courier graciously orders and 
pays for) from the orange-woman on the 
platform, and is helped back into his 
coupe to doze away another hour or two 
of exquisitely beautiful scenery in the 
comfortable assurance that he is "do- 
ing" the Riviera. 

There is a good deal of interesting 
sightseeing to be had in and about 
Cannes. The oddly -shaped umbrella- 
pines just on the outskirts of the vil- 
ladom are a novelty to most people. 
Within easy reach lie Grasse, most apt- 
ly named of villages, where all that's 
odorous in scents and all that's luscious 
in fruits glaces are manufactured, and 
Vallauris, where the descendants of a 
line of potters said to have lasted un- 
broken from the days of Roman rule 
turn out bowls and pots and vases of a 
rough earthenware, simple but excellent 
both in form and coloring, and indeed 
everything that could be wished but for 
an excess of porousness. Then, again, 
it is but a short sail — or even row — to the 
island of Ste. Marguerite, where you may 
realize the scene of Marshal Bazaine's 
sensational escape from prison and ver- 
ify the truth of Thackeray's eulogistic bal- 
lad by lunching on bouillabaisse, Cannes 
certainly is — at least for everybody ex- 
cept the strangely - constituted beings to 
whom shops, toilettes, theatres and bus- 
tle are the sutnmum bonum — a far pleas- 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



151 




EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



anter resting-place than its big neighbor 
Nice ; which latter, too, lying exposed as 
it does at the foot of a trough in the 
mountains through which the piercingly 
cold mistral comes sweeping down from 
•■he north-west, is a delusion and a snare 
>o the invalids who come in hopes of find- 
%ng a mild winter there. Nor is this all. 
Of late years Nice has suffered from the 
addition of a very undesirable element 
to its population — that of the gamblers 
attending the casmo at Monte Carlo, who 
find in a big town like Nice ample and 
handy head-quarters, and bring in their 
train a camp-following of not merely in- 
different but offensive characters. Peo- 
ple of this class so throng the afternoon 
and evening trains on the short section 
of line between Nice and IVIonte Carlo — 
the notorious gaming-house moiety of 
the prince of Monaco's liliputian domin- 
ion — as to make the transit positively 
disagreeable to the ordinary traveller. 
From the time a party of these habitues 
of the roulette -table enter a carriage till 
the train stops at their destination their 
tongues keep up a ceaseless clatter in 
the jargon of the game. Every one of 
them seems to remember, with quite 
marvellous accuracy, all the winning 
numbers and all the runs upon the 
red and black of the previous even- 
ing. There are jokes too, and laughter 
in plenty, but — perhaps it is that some 
are all the time secretly smarting over 
losses — there is a smack of malice in 
the fun and an uncomfortable hoUow- 
ness in the laughter. One is glad when 
they are gone and one has a few min- 
utes of quiet to gather together the mis- 
cellaneous paraphernalia of travel before 
arriving at Mentone. 

Provided only that one's lodging is as- 
sured, it is a distinct advantage to reach 
a journey's end after nightfall. There 
is a delicious curiosity generated by the 
shrouding darkness, a weirdness about 
the silent roads and shapes of trees and 
buildings, a pleasant excitement as to 
what to-morrow will disclose, a restful 
consciousness that the present physical 
instinct for repose may be indulged not 
only without loss, but with the certainty 
of a fresher and more appreciative sus- 



ceptibility to first impressions in the morn- 
ing. And in the mean time what an ex- 
tra zest, after six-and-thirty hours of con- 
tinuous travelling, in the hearty welcome 
of hospitahty ! We can hardly, in the 
dark, make out the outline of the villa, 
but the bright-green door, the tile-floored 
entrance-passage and the slippery stone 
staircase italicize it unmistakably, while 
the comfortable curtains and Turkey car- 
pets, the Nineteenth Ce7itury and Nation 
on the table, the pictures and china on 
the walls and an indefinable air of cozi- 
ness in every room, attest quite as plainly 
an English-speaking home. Of course 
the new-comers from London have a 
store of "Skinner's Best Bird's-eye" (a 
thing quite unpurchasable at Mentone) 
in their pouches, and equally of course 
the whereabouts and doings of a host 
of common friends have to be commu- 
nicated, and the affairs of the day, cer- 
tain to gravitate into the interminable 
Eastern Question, must be discussed ; so 
it is considerably east of midnight before 
the pipe-ashes are finally shaken out and 
all is quiet inside the sheltering mosquito- 
curtains. 

Oh the surprise and delight of the scene 
revealed on throwing open the lattices in 
the morning I — from the horizon to one's 
very feet the sunbeams drawing a daz- 
zling golden line athwart the water-way ; 
to the right the rippling wavelets break- 
ing white against the olive-crested point 
of Cap Martino ; in the left foreground 
the picturesquely huddled buildings of 
the town running out to the old Genoese 
fort, and behind them a jagged moun- 
tain-screen of Alps, past which the eye 
can just catch the sunlit walls of Bordi- 
ghera. Proverb-mongers may prate what 
they will : I decline to believe that famil- 
iarity can breed aught but increased love 
and admiration for such a spectacle as 
this. 

Quickly out into the garden. Look ! 
the trees all round the house are golden 
with oranges and lemons ; the walks are 
strewn with the red and yellow fruit, that 
of almost every tree having a quite dis- 
tinguishable flavor of its own ; a gigan- 
tic aloe, right opposite the front door, is 
thrusting across the drive a lusty sword- 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



153 




»54 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



arm that seems determined soon to block 
the way ; blushing rose and ungainly cac- 
tus in juxtaposition, suggestive of Beauty 
and the Beast ; and on the slopes be- 
hind terraced vines and figs and patri- 
archal olive trees — a feast for our eyes 
in the present, and for the housewife a 
treasure of unsophisticated marmalade 
and sun-dried figs and oil in the not dis- 
tant future. 

There will be ample time before de- 
jeuner to stroll out to the headland of 
Cap Martino ; and one need not seek a 
better standpoint from which to get a 
general panoramic idea of Mentone and 
its surroundings. The curve of the shore 
is broken abruptly into two bays by a 
narrow hump, topped by the remains of 
a castle (now converted into a cemetery) 
and crowded with the buildings of the old 
town, while west and east along the coast 
stretch the hotels and pensions and vil- 
las of these latter days. Half a mile in- 
land rises an isolated knoll crowned by 
a Capuchin monastery, and to the north, 
north-west and east the background is 
closed in by a semicircle of mountains, 
spurs of the Maritime Alps range, fend- 
ing off every wind except those from the 
west and south. The east bay is the 
more sheltered, so there the wintering 
invalids abound ; and equally of course 
the robuster ones, residents and tran- 
sients alike, prefer the west bay, where, 
too, they get ampler space, more trees, 
something of a public garden and a daily 
band into the bargain. 

The sea of the Riviera has been stig- 
matized as fishless, but the accusation 
must be accepted, if at all, cuin inultis 
grams. The watcher perched up aloft 
there in the cross-trees of a sort of bear- 
pole overhanging the transparent sea is 
directing the nets of his comrades in the 
boats below to a glancing shoal of an- 
chovies that, not reddened by pickling, 
but in their natural gudgeon-like white- 
ness, will satisfy, or even glut, the mar- 
ket this afternoon ; and several other 
palatable species of the finny tribe — 
fresh sardines, soles, loi{fis de tner, biaji- 
chetti (a delicate and diminutive white- 
bait), and in short all that go to make up 
bouillabaisse — are sufficiently plentiful. 



The supply of particular kinds, though, 
is so variable that anchovies will be three 
sous the kilogramme one day and two 
francs another. 

Is it the southern sun or the indescri- 
bable suggestion of dolce far niente, that 
seems to pervade everything and every- 
body here, that is the cause ? Only a few 
hours ago I was scanning those sharply- 
outlined peaks, L'e Berceau and the rest, 
with an Alpine Clubbist's eagerness to 
assail them all, and already, as we sit 
after dejeuner with coffee and cigars 
under a shady carouba in the garden, 
it seems more pleasant to rest content 
with looking at them. An English vis- 
itor has dropped in with the benevolent 
object of inducing our host — who is un- 
derstood to be in incubation over a mon- 
ograph on Mentonese antiquities — to take 
some promising young native as an as- 
sistant, and is urging his protege's claims 
with an amusing confusion of metaphors : 
" He is a very mine of information about 
the local archaeology, my dear sir. Tap 
him anywh-ere, and I'll warrant him to 
flow. Where you find a real spark of 
native talent like this, it's a positive duty 
to water it. And it's indeed a privilege 
to have all the strata of society rallying 
round you in your useful task." And so 
on, till the party attacked surrenders at 
discretion and escapes from the subject 
by proposing a visit to Dr. Bennet's 
garden. 

On a steep southward -fronting slope 
to the east of the town, and close upon 
the Italian frontier (across which it is a 
temptingly easy stroll to buy and smug- 
gle a pocketful of those long black acrid, 
straw - cored cigars in which some smo- 
kers find a perverse delight), Dr. Henn,- 
Bennet, an English physician resident 
at Mentone, has formed, evidently with 
much devotion of time and thought and 
loving patience, a very notable garden. 
Up till one o'clock every day it lies free- 
ly open to everybody, hospitably chal- 
lenging a visit by the inscription ''Salvete 
avticV carved over its entrance. Here, 
on a staircase of terrace-walls rising one 
above another up the hill, a collection 
of strange fleshy plants that Kew might 
well envy flourishes in the open air, in 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



^55 




156 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



company with palms, camellias, blood- 
red ranunculus, the spiny -leaved sola- 
num, delicate creepers of a pink tissue- 
paper aspect, and a peculiar dull-pink 
variety of stocks. Goldfish sail about 
bumptiously in the necessary water- 
tanks, as if they would cheat you into 
thinking that the water is stored up there 
expressly to show them off, and in a cun- 
ningly-sheltered corner swings a siesta- 
bidding hammock. Not against sun so 
much as against wind this shelter has 
been devised, for somehow the chilling 
mistral intrudes even here at times. The 
gardener propounds, with a fine confi- 
dence, his explanation of how this ne- 
farious wind contrives to blow upon his 
treasures. Sweeping down from the 
north, it dashes upon the Esterel Moun- 
tains, glances off them into the sea, and 
thence is deflected or refracted back, so 
that it comes in round the corner, in the 
deceitful guise of a south - west wind, 
upon Mentone ! An Oxford professor 
of our party, more skilled maybe in Ar- 
istotle and Aldrich than in the physical 
sciences, is so overcome by the effort 
requisite to tal<e in this bewildering the- 
ory that we have to leave him to seek 
innocent refreshment in a suburban va- 
cherie while we ramble home through the 
devious streets of the old town. Near 
the spectacular stairways that lead up 
to the open space — the only one in the 
town — in front of the parish church a 
tablet let into a wall overhanging the 
narrow thoroughfare piously commem- 
orates the spot from which, " Lutetia Ro- 
mam redux," a pontifical Pius blessed 
the assembled crowd. Lower down, the 
market-place teems with vegetables and 
volubility. Beans, peas, artichokes, cel- 
ery and potatoes are recommended by a 
score of shrill voices, or you may have 
newly -pressed figs or grapes, or half a 
dozen kinds of cheese and macaroni. 
The barrister's eye chances to rest upon 
some queer-shaped loaves displayed at 
a bakery-door hard by, and in the twink- 
ling of an eye the lady-bakeress insists 
upon a purchase. A feeble plea of the 
impracticability of getting them home is 
promptly overthrown by "Comme, mon- 
sieur est jeune ! He will carry them 



bravely himself;" and Hortensius finds 
there is nothing for it but to accept the 
compliment to his youth and lug an 
armful of bread along the staring prom- 
enade. 

From early morning till sundown there 
is always abundance of life in the streets 
and alleys of Mentone. The genial sun- 
ny climate has naturally induced habits 
of outdoor life. The average native 
Mentonese gets all the society he wants 
in the streets (where everybody is on 
the familiar footing of nicknames with 
everybody else), and probably keeps up 
a very limited and frugal establishment 
at home ; and needs every centime of a 
scanty income to do that. Anyhow, he 
certainly is not given to hospitality. You 
may have been for years a resident and 
proprietaire , and on the friendliest terms 
with all your Mentonese neighbors, but, 
though habitually kindly, they will never 
ask you to take bite or sup in their houses. 
A dinner-party of numerous courses, pre- 
ceded by five-o'clock tea and Albert bis- 
cuits, is veraciously reported to have been 
given a few years ago at a private house 
in one of the outlying villages ; but the 
hosts were new-comers from somewhere 
near Paris, and no doubt in their vil- 
lage they lacked the economical alter- 
native of street society. 

The servant - system that obtains at 
Mentone is in several respects peculiar. 
A new domestic comes, in the first in- 
stance, for eight days on trial, after which 
the hiring is a monthly one, but termi- 
nable at any moment by either party on 
the terms of the master or mistress, in 
the case of a dismissal, paying — or the 
servant, on voluntarily leaving, forfeit- 
ing — eight days' wages. This power of 
instantaneous leaving, whatever the in- 
convenience caused, must be a potent 
weapon in, say, a cook's hands. And 
it is just this fiery -tempered but prosaical- 
ly necessary class of servants who alone 
have an evil reputation for dishonesty at 
Mentone, where the domestics, though 
inclined to be lazy, are for the most part 
honest, and house-doors stand open and 
unguarded without theft ensuing. The 
cook, here as elsewhere, has a passion for 
perquisites, and is unweanable from illicit 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



157 




158 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



traffickings with the butcher and charcu- 
tier. She persuades herself that the lard 
which she resells to them amounts to a 
quite unappreciable trifle on the kilo, 
and if she is found out will tranquilly 
assure her mistress that she "considered 
it not comme il fauV to serve all the fat 
with the beef. , As for certificates of cha- 
racter, they are about as trustworthy as a 
batch of formal testimonials. The best 
servants are found in Briga, a picturesque 
village some distance inland in the hills, 
where mountain air and simple living 
have made hardy industry a second 
nature. 

But the number of foreign proprietaires 
occupying houses and lands of their own 
at Mentone is very small. The great 
body of the temporary residents for the 
season (which extends from October to 
April) are housed in the many large and 
prosperous-looking hotels and pensions 
which, bearing the names of wellnigh ev- 
ery country under heaven, line the shores 
of both the bays and occupy the neigh- 
boring knolls and slopes. No less than 
thirteen hundred and thirty-six families 
came from different parts of the world to 
pass the winter of 1876-77 at Mentone. 
The English-speaking element was, as 
usual, the strongest, consisting as it did 
of three hundred and seventy -four fam- 
ilies from Great Britain, fifty from the 
United States and two or three from 
Canada. Next came the French vis- 
itors, with two hundred and forty - five 
families, and after them the Germans 
with one hundred and ninety and the 
Russians with one hundred. Represen- 
.tatives of every other European country, 
and several families of Brazilians and 
Japanese, made up the cosmopolitan 
tale. 

The number and variety of the excur- 
sions that may be made on foot, on mule- 
back and by carriage from Mentone make 
it pre-eminently good head-quarters. It 
is an easy day's walk to visit one or more 
of half a dozen mountain-villages almost 
indistinguishable in general color from 
the rocks to which they cling, and from 
which in old days the inhabitants de- 
scried betimes the pirates who were apt 
to pay them unwelcome visits. Rocca- 



bruna is a fairly typical sample of these 
villages, and the stroll up through olive- 
woods (where, according to the amount 
of light upon the leaves and the nature 
of the background to them, they vary be- 
wilderingly in predominant tone between 
green and blue and gray), with occasion- 
al bits of green sward decked with nar- 
cissus, till through groves of lemon you 
suddenly emerge upon the houses pen- 
dent on the precipitous crag, is as charm- 
ing a way of spending a long afternoon 
as need be desired. The professor, scorn- 
ing to waste shoe-leather and economize 
francs, began the ascent on a mule steer- 
ed by a woman holding on to the beast's 
tail ; but, whether it was that the motion 
was uncomfortable, or that its incompat- 
ibility with pedestrians' pace engendered 
a feeling of solitariness, or that the pro- 
ceeding struck him as a trifle ludicrous, 
it was not long before the professorial 
lips mildly whispered, ''Ho avuto assai : 
vuolo descendere" (the professorial Ital- 
ian for "I've had enough, and want to 
get down"), and our friend exchanged 
the saddle for a convenient wayside wall, 
whereon he sat and discoursed to us upon 
many things till time and the hour had 
worn out so much of the afternoon that 
we had scarcely daylight enough left to 
achieve the object of our walk. Rocca- 
bruna is a close -packed nest of houses, 
pierced by narrow, tortuous lanes arched 
over here and there, sorely perplexing to 
a stranger enemy no doubt, and super- 
latively defensible, crowned and domi- 
nated by an ancient moated castle, from 
the battlements of which one might throw 
a stone down on to any one of the wea- 
therworn, bamboo - looking tile roofs of 
the little town. The church is relatively 
spacious, and hung with the gaudy red 
damask so common in Italy. Through 
the doorways of their dark cellar - like 
houses the housewives are visible, en- 
gaged in roasting coifee, chopping wood 
and what not, while a good many of the 
men seem to be content to sit and lounge 
about smoking. They are not greedy of 
high wages, and prefer being masters of 
their own time to being servants of other 
people's money. Themselves perched 
above the route of any thoroughfare. 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



159 




i6o 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



they look down upon no less than four 
lines of road passing between their eyrie 
and the sea. Topmost, the famous Cor- 
niche road from Mentone to Nice winds 
along the mountain-sides ; below it runs 
the road to Monaco ; below that, again, the 
steep gradients of the old Roman way ; 
and lowest of all the level railroad-track. 
A shorter walk, suitable for the fag- 
end of a rainy day, when the sand-path 
will be firm, and all the way up there 
will be a grand view of jagged crests 
standing out dark and clear-cut from 
wreathing clouds, leads to the top of an 
isolated conical hill on which stands the 



monastery Dell' Annunciate. The walls 
of the little chapel of the Capuchin broth- 
ers are thickly hung with ex-voto and 
•z/i2?z^y(zz/ pictures, rudely-drawn but high- 
ly-colored and sensational representa- 
tions of manifold accidents — shipwrecks, 
firework-explosions, crushings under dili- 
gence wheels and falling olive trees, and 
so on — from which the offerers gratefully 
acknowledge themselves to have been 
saved alive by the special interposition 
of Our Lady ; while other still more real- 
istic votaries have brought here memo- 
rial relics of their disasters — crutches, 
rope -ends and gun-stocks — to dangle 




CASTLE OF MONACO. 



perennially from the rafters. The way- 
side "stations" on the approach-path 
would be the seemlier for a charitable 
coating of the paint that the votaries 
daub so liberally upon the records of 
their own sufferings. Meanwhile, pla- 
cidly unconscious, one hopes, of these 
incongruities, the monks pace up and 
down the pleasant promenades of their 
level yard. Vines cover the slopes of 
their sunny hill, and contribute, maybe, 
to the monasterial purse like the famous 
produce of the Chartreuse. At present 
the brethren are merely conversing in 
pairs, with gesticulations appropriate to 
tlie old men in Fmist ; but there is a 



smooth stretch of ground under the 
trees that is suggestive of a snug game 
of bowls now and then, when no trou- 
blesome visitors are about. 

Then, again, it is only a five -miles' 
journey, by road or rail, to Monaco, to 
which diminutive principality, indeed, 
both Mentone and Roccabruna belong- 
ed till about thirty years ago, when, 
goaded beyond endurance by a petty 
tyranny which obliged every subject to 
deal only with the butcher, baker and 
olive -presser holding the prince's mo- 
nopolies, they rebelled and joined them- 
selves on to what then was Savoy, and 
has since, by purchase, become France. 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



i6i 



Monaco is assuredly a thing (it is real 
ly too small for the big word principal 
ity) to be visited and re- 
membered. Upon a di- 
minutive peninsula of rock 
rising sheer out of the sea 
.the narrow - streeted little 
capital hangs on to as much 
of space as was left after the 
pirate- princes of the house 
of Grimaldi had taken what 
they wanted for their cas- 
tle, gardens and parade- 
ground. The castle — or 
rather palace — a really fine 
bit of Italian Renaissance- 
work, is a thorough show- 
place, and apparently ex- 
ists for the benefit of a corps 
of sleek personages in liv- 
ery, each of whom does a 
strictly limited portion of 
the lionizing and expects 
a separate fee. One shows 
the state apartments, dis- 
tressingly stately and gild- 
ed, with canopied bed- 
steads, ornamental chairs 
and shiny floors, quite un- 
associable with any idea of 
actual use and habitancy ; 
another descants upon Ca- 
ravaggio's frescoes in the 
gallery of the court ; and a 
third picks up the visitor at 
the staircase foot and acts 
showman to the garden. 
Escaping at last, an easy 
descent — first across the 
palace^/a^i?, where, as like- 
ly as not, the only living 
beings in sight will be a 
couple of the superfine- 
blue-cloth-dressed warriors 
of the princedom listlessly 
pelting one another with the 
gravel, and then through 
streets honored by the con- 
sular escutcheons of a sur- 
prising number of useful 
and important states of the 
Hayti and Ecuador class — 
leads down to a narrow slip of land, the 
Condamine, which, skirting the shore of 
II 



the harbor, connects Monaco with its 
all-important suburb and complement, 




the promontory of Monte Carlo. " Fa- 
cilis ascensus Averni." An excellent 



l62 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



wide road leads up to the plateau, where, 
surrounded by lovely gardens and look- 
ing out upon such a panorama of moun- 
tain, wood and water as hardly another 
spot even on the Riviera can show, the 
gaming-saloons of the late M. Charles 
Blanc (he died a few months ago, worth, 
it is said, some ninety millions of francs) 
stand invitingly open to the stranger pub- 
lic. Yes, here is indeed in all serious- 
ness a veritable "Cercle des Etrangers." 
No subject of the prince is allowed to 
set foot within its doors : such is the pa- 
ternal care of His Highness the prince 
sovereign for the pockets of his people, 
who moreover, thirty-four hundred souls 
in all, enjoy the unique fehcity of paying 
absolutely no taxes at all, the demands 
upon the public revenue being complai- 
santly met by the Monte Carlo author- 
ities out of the moneys daily left in their 
cashier's hands by visitors. The theory 
of the gaming-house being a private club 
is kept up by a regulation (not very strict- 
ly insisted upon) requiring every visitor, 
before entering the saloons, to obtain, in 
exchange for his (or her) visiting-card, a 
ticket of membership for the day. That 
formality complied with, the whole build- 
ing, with its rouge-et-noir and roulette 
tables, its concert- and reading-rooms, 
is at your service ; and if you have been 
prudent enough to come provided with 
a return ticket (ensuring your retreat to 
Mentone, Nice or wherever you may be 
staying), a hearty antecedent meal (en- 
suring you against starvation till you are 
at home again), and no more cash about 
your person than you could afford to lose 
in the course of an evening's whist with- 
out annoyance, a single day at Monte 
Carlo will probably do you no very last- 
ing harm. Indeed, if a gambler goes 
farther and fares worse to the extent of 
staking and losing his all at the tables, 
the "administration," keenly alive to the 
,"olic> of avoiding scandal, will be gene- 
rous enough to dole out to him the price 
of a railway-ticket to — almost anywhere 
— provided he takes himself off out of the 
principality without fuss or outcry. A 
short time ago, though, they were finely 
caught at their own game. One after- 
noon, when the play was at its fiercest, 



a stranger was seen to rush out of the 
saloons with despair apparent in his ex- 
cited strides, wild-staring eyes and ruffled 
hair, and to hurry out of sight into one 
of the secluded corners of the adjacent 
gardens. Soon the not unfamiliar bang ! 
bang ! of a revolver rang through the 
air : one of the attendants ran in the 
direction of the sound, found the stran- 
ger stretched motionless, the smoking 
revolver in his hand, upon a path, and 
at once, with much presence of mind and 
obedience to the standing orders of the 
administration, stuffed the pockets of the 
fallen with bank-notes enough to con- 
vince the most prejudiced anti-Blancite 
that the catastrophe could not have been 
the result of ruin at the tables, and then 
sped off to give the alarm. A few min- 
utes and a cloud of would-be witnesses 
were on the spot ; but, lo and behold ! 
there was nothing for them to witness. 
The stranger and the notes had vanished. 
Seriously, though, this flaunting Monte 
Carlo establishment is a curse to the whole 
neighborhood. Not only does it lead di- 
rectly to a yearly tale of suicides and find 
infatuated victims in chance visitors from 
all countries under heaven, but it fills all 
the neighboring towns with swarms of 
profligates, and tempts such people as 
local station - masters, petty tradesmen, 
and even domestic servants, to embez- 
zlement, bankruptcy and theft. The in- 
habitants of the principality itself being, 
as I have said, strictly debarred from en- 
tering the Cercle, the chief sufferers are 
the residents in the French departments 
surrounding it ; and these have lately 
presented a vigorous memorial to the 
senators and deputies of France pray- 
ing them to take steps to abate the 
nuisance. They argue, not unreasonably, 
that France has the right, as well as the 
might, to do so. Even if Monaco, with 
its right princely and (on paper) impos- 
ing array of courtly functionaries and its 
army of seventy men, is to be account- 
ed an independent state (though in truth 
the telegraph, post-office, railway and 
customs services are all entirely under 
French control), still the maxim "Sic 
utere tuo, ut alienum non Isedas," must 
apply to it, and its neighbors cannot be 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



163 



bound to submit to such a pest as Monte 
Carlo is to them, merely that His High- 
ness of Monaco may live in luxury at 
Paris as the pensionary of a gaming- 
house director. It is to be hoped that 
the death of M. Blanc will soon be fol- 
lowed by the extinction of the establish- 



ment so disastrously associated with his 
name. 

But enough of this disagreeable sub- 
ject. Let us shake off from our feet 
the dust of Monte Carlo, and follow the 
Riviera eastward from Mentone. 

It is a perfect morning, as indeed morn- 





BORDIGHERA. 



ings commonly are hereabouts. Our open 
carriage is early at the villa -gate, and 
proves good-humoredly accommodating 
in the disposal of our very miscellaneous 
belongings — oranges, chocolate - cakes, 
rolls, newspapers, Baedekers, a bottle of 
Bordeaux, sunshades, overcoats and the 



professor's cache -nez. But where is our 
host ? At last he emerges, laughing, from 
the house, to tell us how, while he was sit- 
ting alone in the breakfast -room finish- 
ing his coffee, a well-to-do but penurious 
old lady of the neighborhood, finding the 
house and room doors open, had coolly 



1 64 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 



walked in upon him, and, pinning him 
down with some cock-and-bull story 
about her son, had reduced him to pur- 
chasing his escape by giving her a five- 
franc piece, which she had condescend- 
ingly pocketed with an intimation that 
she would return in a fortnight to finish 
her story and borrow something more. 

After crossing the Italian frontier just 
beyond the outskirts of the town the 
road gradually ascends, sheltered here 
by magnificent olives, between which 
one gets delicious peeps downward of 
bright lemon-groves backed by lustrous 
sea. Then comes a succession of sudden 
zigzag bends and ups and downs in plen- 
ty, following the contour of the mountain- 
sides, and then a brisk rattle down a long 
slope ends in the steep streets of the pic- 
turesque fortress of Ventimiglia. Here 
it is de rigiieur to halt and visit an old 
church in whose crypt one of the sup- 
porting pillars is an undoubted Roman 
milestone, bearing the inscription, " An- 
toninus PIUS IMPERATOR AUGUSTUS CU- 
RAVIT, Dxc." And the veriest Gallio in 
the matter of such relics will feel well 
repaid for having given in to this bit of 
sightseeing by the memorable view of a 
row of snow-capped giants of the Mar- 
itime Alps that is commanded from a 
little square hard by the church. 

Our cocker is in no particular hurry ; 
so, before making a fresh start, we stroll 
through the narrow (and, if truth be told, 
not too savory) sireets on the prowl for 
something characteristic to buy. We 
scorn the professor's prosaic purchase 
of a three -franc comforter, and invest 
in some specimens of roughly-glazed red 
pottery — tiny pipkins at a sou apiece, 
that, whatever they may have been in- 
tended for, will serve aptly for cigar-ash 
trays — and oil-cruets of the coarsest glass, 
but noteworthy for the grace of their long 
slender necks and curved spouts. 

Ventimiglia passed, the road drops 
sharply almost to the sea -level, and 
stretches across an unctuous expanse 
of water-meadows to the promontory on 
which Bordighera basks sleepily in the 
sun. Here is the Paradise of palms, 
combining, as it does, the two condi- 
tions — "its feet in the water and its head 



in the sun" — under which the palm best 
flourishes. In the gardens of the French 
consulate and other villas fine specimens 
have been gathered together in showy 
profusion ; but all about the outskirts of 
the town they are cultivated on strictly 
commercial principles, the young shoots 
being covered up and hidden from the 
light to keep them white, as required in 
the market for which they are destined, 
that of the purveyors of palms for the 
Palm-Sunday observances of Rome. To 
most visitors, though, the neighborhood 
of Bordighera has its chief associations 
in being the scene of Ruffini's famous 
novel Doctor Antonio, and they will be 
trying to pick out the wayside house in 
which that Admirable Crichton of a doc- 
tor healed and lOved as they drive along 
the shaded road beyond the town, and 
will perhaps feel rather annoyed by the 
obtrusive self-assertion with which the 
big white villa of M. Garnier (the archi- 
tect of the new opera-house at Paris), 
with its gossamer tower, dominates the 
view ; which indeed, as we open out La 
Colla nestling on the mountain-side and 
Ospidaletto on the bay below, is surpass- 
ingly beautiful. It is not much farther to 
San Remo. The wealth of fleshy plants 
and mesymbrianthemum with its pink 
and yellow flowers that fill the gardens 
of the Hotel de Londres bears eloquent 
testimony to a geniality of climate which 
recommends this spot above all others to 
many of the health-seeking visitors to the 
Riviera. The lover of the picturesque 
will perhaps find his chief attraction in 
the close -huddled buildings of the old 
town, which covers the steep sides of an 
isolated hill crowned by the invariable 
castle. High up in the air the narrow 
alleys are bridged at short intervals by 
slender arches of brickwork, the mean- 
ing and use of which become apparent 
when one learns that the place is from 
time to time disturbed by earthquake- 
shocks, which this clamping together of 
the houses gives them the best chance of 
weathering. As to the products of San 
Remo, the present writer's most vivid 
recollection is of a variety of smells un- 
equalled even by Cologne ; but it must 
also be recorded to its honor that here. 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 




X65 



i66 



EASTER ON THE RIVIERA. 




at last, the professor 
chanced upon and pur- 
chased the ideal Hat 
that he had sought in 
vain for many a weary 
day — a soft, broad- 
brimmed, conical prod- 
igy, the like of which, 
gentle reader, 1 venture 
to assert you will not 
see until you have the 
good fortune to come 
across our professor. 
The local red wine, too — 
by name Dolciacqua — 
may fairly claim a good 
mark for San Remo. 

It is not a little enter- 
taining and instructive 
to occupy the seat be- 
side the driver on a Ri- 
viera excursion. If he 
is a Frenchman, he will, 
as likely as not, have 
served in the disastrous 
campaign of 1870, and 
will have plenty to say 
about the selfishness of 
the Second Empire and 
the abuses in army or- 
ganization that were re- 
vealed in the war and 
have since been cor- 
rected. "Ah, now,'' he 
will tell you, "every 
one is a soldier: no 
substitutes are allowed. 
C est juste. The young 
subalterns now -a- days 
have to look after their 
work, and have no ser- 
V a n t s . As for Ger- 
many — Well, every 
Frenchman has some- 
thing in his head.'' 
And then he will go off 
into anecdotes and 
scraps of information 
suggested by passing 
objects, and gossip 
about local customs — 
as, for instance, that at 
Mentone it is forbidden 
to plant timber - trees — 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



167 



the eucalyptus, for example, within two 
and a half metre.s, and oranges within 
two metres, of a neighbor's boundary — 
and practical hints as to where one may 
best buy the dolce tobacco of Italy for 
five-and-fifty centimes the packet. 

It is perhaps one of the many "things 
not generally known" that the district 
of Mentone possesses quite a distinct 
Romance dialect of its own, in the in- 
vestigation of which the philologically in- 
clined may find a very interesting field 



of study. The ground has recently been 
broken by two diligent and careful works 
by Mr. J. B. Andrews, an American gen- 
tleman resident at Mentone, who has for 
the first time reduced Mentonese to gram- 
mar and exhibited it in a printed vocabu- 
lary. But much yet remains to be done in 
settling the orthography and orthoepy of 
the dialect, and there is reason to believe 
that any one who is ambitious to be the 
founder of a literature may find a virgin 
opportunity in Mentonese. W. D. R. 



A MONTH IN SICILY. _^ 




LA FAVORITA. 



EARLY on the morning of the first 
of February we stood on the deck 
of the steamer for Palermo, watching the 
sun rise over the water. Far away in the 
south the blue edge of the sea began to 
grow bluer with the rising of the distant 



land. A fresh breeze blew from the 
shore — not a pleasant feature in Febru- 
ary weather at home, but suggesting com- 
parisons with the warmest morning of a 
New England May. With the swift ad- 
vance of the steamer the blue line in the 



i68 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



south rapidly rose above the level of the 
sea into the definite shape of a rugged 
mountain-range : gradually the blueness 
of distance changed to rich shades of 
brown and red on the jagged, treeless 
summits, and to deepest green where 
long orange -farms border the bases of 
the mountains. 

Who has not longed to see Sicily ? 
Every one who loves poetry, romance or 
the history of ancient civilization must 
often turn in thought to this beautiful 
and famous Mediterranean island. To 
the most ancient poets it was a mys- 
terious land, where dwelt the monster 
Charybdis and the bloody Laestrigones ; 
where Ulysses met the Cyclops ; where 
the immortal gods waged battles with 
the giant sons of Earth, and bound 
Enceladus in his eternal prison. No 
doubt it was the terrific natural phe- 
nomena of Sicily — the earthquakes and 
the outbursts of Etna — which rendered 
it so much a land of horrors to the early 
Greek imagination. But in that far-dis- 
tant age it was not only the terrors of 
the place that had worked upon the 
imaginative Greeks : the almost tropical 
luxuriance of the country, the unrivalled 
scenery, the brilliancy of the sky, made 
it a fitting ground for the adventures of 
nymphs, heroes and gods. In the foun- 
tain of Sicilian Ortygia dwelt Arethusa, 
the nymph dear to the poets ; beside the 
Lake of Enna, where rich vegetation 
overran- the lips of the extinct volcano, 
was the spot called in mythology the 
meeting -place of Pluto and Proserpine 
— the power of darkness and the spring- 
ing plant personified ; and so through 
all the country places were found made 
sacred by the presence of the great di- 
vinities, and temples were erected in 
their honor. 

When the age of fable had passed 
away, far back in the early dawn of Eu- 
ropean history begins authentic know- 
ledge about Sicily. While wicked Ahaz 
reigned in the kingdom of Judah, and 
Isaiah had not ceased to utter his proph- 
ecies, the Greek colonization of Sicily 
began. Seven hundred and thirty-five 
years before Christ, Theocles with his 
band of Greeks from Euboea founded 



Naxos on the coast, hard by the fertile 
slopes of Etna. Within three centuries 
from that time the whole Sicilian coast 
had been studded with Greek cities, and 
to such wealth, power and splendor of 
art had they attained that all succeeding 
epochs of the island's history seem de- 
generate times when compared with that 
early golden age. 

It has beert truly said that " there is 
not a nation which has materially in- 
fluenced the destinies of European civ- 
ilization that has not left distinct traces of 
its activity in this island." PhcEnicians, 
Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Normans, 
Spaniards, French and English have 
successively occupied the island, and 
noble monuments of the varied civiliza- 
tions are standing to this day. Scatter- 
ed through the island, their architectural 
remains crown the mountain-tops or lie 
in confusion along the Mediterranean 
shore, a series of ruins extending througl: 
twenty-five centuries, unmatched in anj- 
other country for variety of age and style. 

At ten o'clock our steamer entered the 
Gulf of Palermo, passing near the base 
of Monte Pellegrino, a wild promontory 
which towers up two thousand feet from 
the sea. On the day before I had enter- 
ed for the first time the famous Bay of 
Naples, but with less delight than I now 
looked upon the beauties of this Sicilian 
gulf. Flanked with lofty mountains, color- 
ed* with the matchless blue of the Mediter- 
ranean, studded with picturesque lateen 
sails, the bay is a fitting entrance to this 
fair historic island : a more beautiful ap- 
proach could hardly be imagined even to 
thfe Islands of the Blessed. 

The Italians call Palermo la felice 
("the happy "). It is most happy in its 
climate, its situation and its noble streets 
and gardens. Below the city lies the 
lovely bay : behind it stretches back for 
miles, between converging mountain- 
chains, the fruit -producing level of the 
Golden Shell (Za Conca d'Oro). The 
plain is one vast orchard of oranges and 
lemons which every year distributes its 
huge crop over half the habitable globe. 
The city is worthy of its position. The 
chief streets are broad, clean and hand- 
somely built — a contrast to the universal 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



169 




CATHEDRAL OF PALERMO. 



I70 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



shabbiness and squalor we had found in 
Naples. 

A traveller is sure to be put in a good 
humor with the place by the many and 
unusual comforts which he meets in the 
great sea -fronting hotel; and the first 
look from the windows of his apartment 
confirms the opinion that Palermo is the 
fairest of Southern cities. The outlook 
is upon the grand seashore drive, the 
Marina, as gay and pretty a sight as can 
be found in any European capital. The 
broad, tree-shaded avenue, bordered on 
one side by hotels and palaces, on the 
other by the waters of the bay, is throng- 
ed with private carriages. Beginning at 
the sea-facing gate of the city, the road 
commands through all its length a view 
of the mountains, the bay and the open 
sea : at its terminus lie the public flower- 
gardens — acres of our choicest hothouse 
plants growing in tropical profusion. 

In Palermo, as in so many European 
towns, the cathedral is the chief archi- 
tectural attraction. To approach it from 
the bay the whole length of the city must 
be traversed on the Corso Vittorio Em- 
manuele, the chief business street. This 
coi'so is crossed at the centre of the town 
by another of equal width, which also 
coinmemorates by its name Italian unity 
— the Corso Garibaldi. There is one 
other broad and important street which 
no American can enter without remem- 
bering that even in this distant land the 
interest and sympathy of the people have 
been with our country in its struggles and 
successes : it is the Via Lincoln. 

The drive up the Corso gives an op- 
portunity for seeing a remarkably hand- 
some street lined with gay shops, and for 
studying the peculiar and often fine faces 
of the Sicilian people ; but nothing of 
striking interest appears until, near the 
centre of the town, a street opening on 
the left discloses a vista ending in a 
small forest of white marble statues. On 
a nearer view it is found that the statues 
belong to the immense fountain of the 
Piazza Pretoria, a work erected about 
A. D. 1550 by command of the senate of 
Palermo. It is perhaps the largest and 
most elaborate fountain in Europe, and, 
though it is easy to criticise the countless 



sculptures that adorn it, the whole effect 
of their combination into an architectural 
unit is most imposing. 

Continuing the drive up the Corso, a 
broad piazza suddenly opens on the right, 
flanked by the cathedral. The abrupt- 
ness of the transition from between the 
dark lines of buildings into the sunlight 
of the square adds to the first strong im- 
pression produced by the beauty of the 
vast duomo. In its external architecture 
the church is unique : the charm of it to 
one who has been travelling through Italy 
is its utter dissimilarity to all the Italian 
churches. Architectural writers call it a 
building of the " Sicilian Gothic style;" 
and, though the expression does not con- 
vey a vivid image except to the student 
of art, any one can see its essential dif- 
ference from the style of the North, and 
can recognize the rare grandeur and 
beauty of the church. The form is sim- 
ple, but the dimensions are grand. With- 
out the boldness of outline of true Gothic 
churches, the walls are so covered with 
ornaments of interlacing arches, cornices 
and arabesque slightly raised on the ma- 
sonry as to produce an effect of wonder- 
ful richness. The style is peculiarly Si- 
cilian, yet every observer of mediaeval 
churches will at once detect the Nor- 
man, Italian and Saracenic influences 
blended in an exquisite harmony. Con- 
nected with the church by light arches, 
but separated from it by a street, stands 
the campanile, a mass of enormous solid- 
ity, terminating in many pinnacles and 
one slender and graceful tower rising 
above them all. Four other lofty towers, 
springing from the corners of the church, 
give additional lightness to its elegant 
design : they were added to the building 
nearly three centuries after the Norman 
conquest of Sicily, and yet their minaret- 
like form and pointed panel ornaments 
show how strong and lasting had been 
the influence of Arabian art upon the 
mediaeval architects of Sicily. 

It is seven hundred years since the 
foundations of the duomo were laid. In 
that distant age, and in a land so remote, 
it is a curious circumstance that its found- 
er was an Englishman : Gitalterio Offa- 
milio is the amusing Italian corruption 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



171 



by which the name of Walter of the Mill I ter Roger and his Normans had driven 
was suited to the Southern tongue. Af- I from Sicily the Arab power ^which had 




held the land for more than two centu- 
ries, and when Christianity had succeed- 
ed the Mohammedan religion throughout 



the island, Archbishop Walter assumed 
spiritual sovereignty in Palermo, and 
founded this cathedral on the site of an 



172 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



ancient mosque. Only a part of the 
original building remains in the crypt 
and two walls of the present church. 
All subsequent ages have changed and 
added to its original simple form, but 
often have taken from its beauty. With- 
in the church only a part of the south 
aisle commands close attention : there 
in canopied sarcophagi of porphyry re- 
poses the dust of Roger, king of Sicily 
(1154), of Henry VI., emperor of Ger- 
many, and of Frederick II., Roger's 
most illustrious grandson, king of Sicily, 
king of Jerusalem and emperor of Ger- 
many. In a chapel at the right of the 
high altar, sacred to Santa Rosalia, rest 
the bones of the saint enshrined in a sar- 
cophagus of silver. Thirteen hundred 
pounds of the precious metal are wrought 
into the shrine, and the whole chapel is 
sumptuous with marble frescoes and gild- 
ing, for to the pious souls of Palermo this 
is the very holy of holies. The cathedral 
is dedicated to Rosaha, and almost di- 
vine honors are paid to her by the city 
from which she fled in horror at its wick- 
edness. 

Every summer a festival of three days 
is held in honor of this favorite saint ; 
and again in September a day is kept 
to commemorate her death, when a vast 
concourse of people from Palermo climb 
the side of the neighboring Monte Pelle- 
grino to worship at the grotto of St. Ro- 
salia, a natural cavern situated under an 
overhanging crag of the summit. Here 
the faithful Sicilians believe that the holy 
maiden dwelt in solitude for many years ; 
and here were found in 1624 the bones 
of the saint, which put a stop to the plague 
then raging in Palermo. The cave has 
been made a church by building a porch 
at the entrance. Twisted columns of ala- 
baster support the roof of the vestibule, 
but within the cavern the walls are of the 
natural rock, contrasting strangely with 
the magnificent workmanship of the high 
altar, beneath which lies the marble statue 
of the saint overlaid with a robe of gold, 
while about the recumbent figure are 
placed a book and skull and other ob- 
jects of pure gold. It is a figure of a fair 
young girl, represented by the artist as 
dying, with her head at rest upon one 



hand. Though the statue is the work of 
no very famous artist, Goethe in the nar- 
rative of his Sicilian travel has truly said 
of it, "The head and hands of white mar- 
ble are, if not faultless in style, at least 
so pleasing and natural that one cannot 
help expecting to see them move." 

Under the southern precipices of this 
Mountain of the Pilgrim lies a royal 
park, and in the midst of it stands a 
gaudy and fantastic villa called La Fa- 
vorita. -The house is worth a visit for 
the sake of seeing what a half- crazy 
fancy will produce when united with 
royal wealth. King Ferdinand I., dur- 
ing his stay in Sicily early in this cen- 
tury, amused himself by building this 
country palace in the style of a Chinese 
villa, and adorned it with innumerable 
little bells, to be rung by every move- 
ment of the wind. 

It was in the Favorita that the old 
king found himself cornered by Lord 
William Bentinck and his army during 
the British occupation of the island in 
1S12. It is said that his faithful subjects 
from Palermo encamped by thousands 
in the neighborhood — not, however, for 
the sake of defending their aged mon- 
arch, but to enjoy the fun of witnessing 
a fight in which both sides were hated 
by them with equal cordiality. 

To an enterprising traveller some of 
the pleasantest hours of a long tour are 
those when, cutting loose from all guides 
and books, he wanders alone through 
the streets of an old city, enjoying with 
a sense of discovery the scraps of an- 
tiquity not described in any book which 
he is sure to meet with. Palermo and 
its neighborhood afford a most fertile 
field for such researches. The Saracenic 
villas of the suburbs and the early Nor- 
man buildings of the town will repay 
considerable patience spent in looking 
up the beauties to be found in the de- 
tails of their construction. For instance, 
in the plain old church of S. Agostino 
there is a doorway and wheel window 
one sight of which is an ample reward 
for much wandering and searching. 

On a morning too fresh and beautiful 
for staying in the city we rendered a 
vivacious cabman ecstatically happy by 



A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



173 






an engagement to drive us to Monreale. 
A brisk drive past the royal palace, out 
of the southern 
gate and five miles 
across the orange- 
covered plam 
brought us to the 
foot of an abrupt 
mountain. Not a 
half mile away, 
but far above, on 
the seemingly 
unapproa chable 
heights, was perch- 
ed the quaint vil- 
lage which was our 
destination : its an- 
cient towering 
buildings glittered 
white and hot in 
the February sun 
under the canopy 
of cloudless blue. 
Ascending for half 
an hour on the 
well- constructed 
zigzag road, we 
stopped at the gate 
in the town-wall to 
buy the luscious- 
looking fruit of the 
cactus from a road- 
side vender, one 
of those ideal hags, 
apparently pre- 
served by desicca- 
tion under the tor- 
rid sun, whom only 
Italy can produce 
in perfection. 
Then onward and 
upward we push- 
ed through the 
village street — a 
street characteris- 
tic of these South- 
ern walled villages, 
narrow, dark, fes- 
tooned above with 
interminable lines 
of drying macaro- 
ni, covered below with abundant filth, and 
bordered by house - walls of enormous 
thickness, built for resisting heat. At 



every house-door or on the pavement in 
front sits the man of the house plying his 



^:.' 



"ffliiiiiiiiii'iii ifiiiiiiiiiii 



11 1[ 




trade, that all the world may know whe- 
ther his goods are well made or ill. Up 
and down the street flow the lines of dark- 



t74 



A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



eyed, swarthy people — women robed in 
rags, occasionally set off by a bit of stri- 
king color ; children who in their aston- 
ishment become rigid at the sight of a 
foreigner ; here and there an officer of 
the Italian army carefully picking his way 
through the mud ; and everywhere pro- 
duce-laden asses driven toward Palermo 
by the most picturesque of cut - throats, 
for without its ever-present force of sol- 
diers Monreale would at once relapse 
into a hotbed of brigandage, as its re- 
cent history shows. 

Almost . at the summit of the town, 
facing a broad, paved square, stands the 
cathedral and its adjacent Benedictine 
monastery, both built upon the brink of 
the precipitous mountain, and both in 
external appearance severely plain, al- 
most to shabbiness. 

William II., king of Sicily, called the 
Good, founded on this Royal Mount a 
monastery for the Benedictine friars, and 
built it up with all the strength of a fort- 
ress and the magnificence of a palace. 
Little is left of that original building, 
which was finished in 1174, but in its 
few remains have fortunately been pre- 
served the most splendid of cloisters. 
This scene of centuries of Benedictine 
meditations is a large quadrangle sur- 
rounded by an arcade of multitudinous 
small pointed arches resting upon pairs 
of slender white marble columns, like 
stalks of snow-white lilies in their grace 
and lightness. Some of the marble shafts 
are wrought with reliefs of flowers and 
trailing vines, while most of them were 
inlaid in bands or spirals of mosaic in 
gold and colors, now injured by age. 
The capitals which crown these shafts 
are exquisitely carved, and all mythol- 
ogy, the legends of the Church and the 
book of Nature have been ransacked to 
furnish subjects for the designs ; so that 
out of two hundred or more no two are 
similar. All the decaying magnificence 
of the great building is pervaded by an 
oppressive silence, for it is one of the 
innumerable religious houses suppress- 
ed by the Italian government. 

From the monastery to the cathedral 
is a walk of but a few steps. All disap- 
pointment at the external plainness is 



forgotten in approaching the chief en- 
trance of the church. Michael Angelo 
said of Ghiberti's doors at Florence that 
"they were worthy to be the entrance to 
Paradise." They have rightly become 
famous through all the world, and yet 
these doors of Monreale leave on the 
mind of the beholder a strong impres- 
sion of their beauty not less lasting than 
the Baptistery gates at Florence. In the 
execution of the biblical reliefs which 
completely encrust the massive leaves 
of bronze they must yield, of course, to 
the mature art of Ghiberti's later age ; 
but the stately height of the solid metal 
doors, the alternate bands of mosaic and 
wrought - stone arabesques which flank 
them and surround over head the Ara- 
bian arch, and, above all, the sense that 
they conceal from view unparalleled 
splendors beyond, leave on the mind 
an impression which cannot be effaced. 
Perhaps no other building deserves the 
epithet "splendid" so exactly as the ca- 
thedral of Monreale : the whole interior 
is radiant from the vast extent of its pic- 
tured walls. All the walls and vaulting 
of the nave and aisles, transepts and 
tribune, are overspread with ancient mo- 
saics on a golden ground. It is natural 
to compare St. Ivlark's cathedral at Ven- 
ice with this church, on account of its 
immense mosaic - covered surface: its 
sumptuous interior delights every be- 
holder with the satisfying completeness 
which belongs to it ; yet in all the Orien- 
tal splendor of the Venetian church noth- 
ing can equal in impressiveness a glance 
down the nave of Monreale. Wherever 
the eye turns it rests upon the glowing 
colors of some sacred picture — scenes 
from the Old Testament history, bright- 
robed figures of flying angels, haloed 
saints in the quaint Byzantine style, 
apostles and m.artyrs, patriarchs and 
prophets, and, high above them all, 
from a great picture in the vaulting of 
the apse, a startling face of Christ look- 
ing solemnly down through the length of 
the cathedral. Half the stiffness which 
characterizes these early mosaics seems 
to have been cast aside in treating this 
supreme subject. The colossal size of 
the figure, the hand raised in blessing 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



175 



the multitude, the sad but awful expres- [ pervading presence in the church. Amid 
sion of the countenance, make it an all- | all the glittering splendor of the building, 




while the gorgeous pomp of a holiday mass 
progressed and rippling strains of organ- 
music ran echoing through the arches, 



through all the bewildering brightness of 
the spectacle, the majesty of that Presence 
could not for a moment be forgotten, nor 



176 



A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



could the eyes avoid straying off from the 
ghtter below to answer again and again 
to that solemn gaze above. 

It is impossible, in any ordinary pic- 
ture, to convey more than a very faint 
idea of this building, in which the pecu- 
liar beauties are dependent upon color, 
unlike the Gothic churches of the North : 
nothing but an oil painting of minute de- 
tails could render the effects produced by 
the bars of sunshine descending through 
the twilight of the church and striking on 
the glowing, pictured walls. The extent 
of surface covered by the mosaics is said 
to be more than sixty thousand square 
feet. 

By the bounty of the same pious mon- 
arch who endowed the neighboring mon- 
astery the cathedral was completed just 
seven hundred years ago. His body lies 
entombed in the transept : his monument 
is the wonderful pile whose construction 
has made his name to be remembered 
by succeeding ages more than all his 
other deeds. 

Outside the cathedral, adjoining the 
monastery -wall, a commanding terrace 
is built upon the verge of the precipice. 
Leaning from its edge, we gazed almost 
vertically into the orange-groves below, 
where the ripe fruit glowed with the bright- 
ness of a flame contrasted with the dark- 
ness of the foliage. Far and wide were 
spread the fruit-gardens over the plain, 
to where the mountains towered up in 
the east,- and northward to the city and 
the sea. It is one of those bright and 
satisfying scenes from which a traveller 
can hardly turn away without a tinge of 
bitterness in the thought of never seeing 
them again. 

The drive back to the town was pleas- 
antly varied by a detour which brought 
us to the Capuchin monastery and the 
Saracenic villa of La Ziza. The vaults 
of the monastery are mentioned as one 
of the interesting sights, but it must be 
a very ghoulish soul that would take 
pleasure in them. The horrors of the 
more famous Capuchin vaults at Rome 
are tame in comparison with these. 
There the ornaments are skulls and 
skeletons in a tolerable state of clean- 
liness : here the departed brethren have 



been subjected to some mummifying 
process, and as they lie piled in hideous 
confusion their withered faces stare hor- 
ribly in the twilight of the cellar. Nu- 
merous fiery -eyed cats run about with 
much scratching and scrabbling over 
the dry bodies, making the place none 
the pleasanter with their uncanny wails. 
A very brief visit is sufficient. 

La Ziza, the only Saracenic house of 
this region which is still inhabited, is 
simply a massive, battlemented tower 
of unmistakably Arabian appearance. 
The outside walls are adorned with the 
depressed panels characteristic of the 
Saracenic style, but within the Oriental 
look has almost vanished under the re- 
pairs and decorations of many centuries. 
Only the lofty hallway, arched above 
with a kind of honeycomb vaulting and 
cooled by a little cascade of water rush- 
ing through it, retains much of the Orien- 
tal beauty, and seems like a hall of the 
Alhambra. Along a wall of the vesti- 
bule runs an inscription in Arabic which 
has been a puzzle to Orientalists, and of 
which no undisputed interpretation is giv- 
en. The palace was built as a country 
pleasure-house by one of the Saracenic 
princes of Palermo, and can be little less 
than a thousand years old ; indeed, an 
inscription on its walls, inscribed by one 
of the Spanish proprietors, claims for 
the house an antiquity of eleven hun- 
dred years. 

From the battlements of La Ziza one 
has the loveliest near view of Palermo 
and the plain of the Golden Shell. An 
enthusiastic verse, written over the door- 
way of the palace, declares it to be the 
most beautiful scene upon our planet, 
and while the eyes are resting on the 
view it is easy to believe the poet ; but 
many of the mountain -views about the 
city surpass it. 

One of the most attractive of the 
mountain - excursions from Palermo is 
that to the monastery of San Martino. 
At a height of seventeen hundred feet 
above the city, in a lonely spot, the 
monastery stands on another flank of 
the mountain on which Monreale is 
also perched. The mule-path from the 
suburban village of Boccadifalco to San 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



^n 




178 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



Martino would be worth traversing for 
its own wild beauty alone. It first en- 
ters a gorge between grand cliffs : then, 
climbing a rocky ascent which com- 
mands a superb view of the plain, it 
runs through a fruitful valley, where the 
monastery suddenly appears in the front. 

The monastery of San Martino has 
been the wealthiest in Sicily. The en- 
trance-hall is on a scale of regal mag- 
nificence, adorned with many -colored 
marbles. The brethren were all of noble 
extraction. Though the external archi- 
tecture of the building is not in the best 
taste, the grand scale on which it is built, 
and still more the wild, picturesque site, 
give to the monastery a beauty which 
even an Italian architect of the last cen- 
tury could not disfigure. Ascending a 
grand staircase with balustrades of pur- 
ple marble, an upper hall is reached, 
from which the wonderful view may be 
seen to the best advantage. Turning 
the eye to the north and east across the 
savage-looking mountains, a short reach 
of the coast is seen, and beyond is the 
boundless expanse of sea, dotted on the 
horizon by the volcanoes of the .^olian 
Islands, which lie more than a hundred 
miles away. The abbey abounds in pic- 
tures by masters of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and there is also a museum of Greek 
and Saracenic remains, but nothing with- 
in the walls compares with the interest of 
the window-views. 

Attractive as are the sights of Palermo, 
most of them must be passed over or 
very hastily visited if the tour of the isl- 
and is to be made in a month, for the 
Greek cities beyond demand a greater 
share of time by reason of their immense 
antiquity and the grandeur of their re- 
mains. 

Being well prepared for the inland 
journey, and eager to see antiquities 
so little known to the outer world, one 
question arose to give us pause — a ques- 
tion which every year keeps thousands 
of prudent tourists from exploring a 
country as full of glorious scenery as 
Switzerland, possessing more of Greek 
antiquities than Greece itself, and a far 
lovelier winter climate than Italy — " Is 
it safe ?" The doubtful question whether 



this rarely-attempted journey should be 
accomplished was settled by the friendly 
advice of the courteous consul of the 
United States at Palermo. That advice 
may be of use to travellers in the future : 
it was to the effect that for two American 
gentlemen travelling alone and without 
ostentation through Sicily there is no 
more danger of capture or violent death 
than in any civilized country. It is ad- 
mitted that highway robbery is not im- 
possible, as in many places nearer home, 
but the simple preventive is to carry as 
little ready money as possible over the 
short spaces of unsettled country, and to 
forward superfluous baggage by steamer. 
That there are banditti in certain districts 
of the island no one denies, but their ob- 
ject is the capture of wealthy Sicilians, 
whose ransom is sure and ample, while 
that of a foreigner is uncertain and ne- 
cessarily long delayed. 

A dark afternoon found us comfortably 
established in the best seats of an old- 
fashioned stage-coach in front of the gen- 
eral post-office of Palermo, whence the 
stage-lines radiate to the various parts 
of the island. After the long delibera- 
tion which seems to characterize all busi- 
ness ( especially official business ) trans- 
acted outside of England and America, 
the mail-bags were delivered, and our 
journey began in the midst of a shower 
descending with all the tremendous im- 
petuosity of a semi-tropical rainy season. 
The cumbersome vehicle dashed on with 
considerable spirit through streets almost 
emptied by the violence of the shower, 
and out through the broad arch of the 
stately Porta Nuova crowded by multi- 
tudes seeking shelter from the storm. 
Late twilight found us at the end of the 
first stage in Monreale. From thence on- 
ward the journey continued for a while 
through pitchy darkness. The broad 
highway is engineered with admirable 
skill along the sides of mountains and 
over deep ravines, through a region of 
most uncommon beauty, it is said, bui 
now hidden from us by the impenetrable 
gloom. However, as the night advanced 
the clouds rolled away with surprising 
suddenness, and left a bright moon rising 
over the mountains. We besran to see 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



179 




something of the beautifully varied coun- I through the narrow window of a covered 
try, though viewing it at a disadvantage I coach. Wherever the rugged nature of the 



i8o 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



country permitted every rood of ground 
was under exquisite cultivation, and al- 
ready had its first soft covering of spring- 
ing vegetation. The night-air was sweet 
with the spring-like odors of freshly-turn- 
ed earth and of wild-flowers : from time to 
time white masses of flower-laden almond 
trees flashed past the window, looking in 
the moonlight wonderfully like the snow- 
drifts which at this season line the roads 
in New England. 

After nightfall the surface of the rich 
and well - cultivated country seemed as 
solitary as a wilderness : not a creature 
was stirring along the road. The intense 
silence of the night was broken only by 
the hum of our coach -wheels and the 
sharp snap of hoofs from our cavalry 
guard. How unlike were all the sur- 
roundings to those of an ordinary mod- 
ern night -journey over the mail -routes 
of Europe ! The primitive conveyance, 
the quiet of the lonely road, the arms of 
the attendant troop of horsemen flash- 
ing in the light of the moon, — all the 
concomitants of an old-time night-jour- 
ney seemed to carry us back from the 
age of railroads to an earlier time. 

Eleven drowsy hours of staging, and 
then a long, slow ascent, brought us up 
to the hilltop where stands the village of 
Calatafimi. The chief inn of the town is 
probably not surpassed in Europe in the 
number of its small discomforts, animate 
and inanimate, but it must be made the 
base of operations for visiting the ruins 
of Segesta. The remnant of the night 
spent in sleep prepared us for our inves- 
tigations on the following day. It was 
pleasant, rising in the cool early morn- 
ing, to step out from the comfortless in- 
terior of the tavern to enjoy on a south- 
ern balcony the temperate warmth of the 
low sun and to look down on the lovely 
landscape. Before us lay a fertile roll- 
ing country clad with verdure, and rising 
gradually upward toward the south to an 
elevation deserving to be called a moun- 
tain from its great height, yet from its 
gentle slope and cultivated sides rather 
to be called a hill. A field near the crest 
of that distant hill, marked only by a few 
white crosses, is a spot memorable in 
Sicilian history, for there lie the heroes 



who fell fighting with Garibaldi for the 
unity of Italy on May 15, i860. Sicily 
has in all ages been a battle-ground for 
the contending races of two continents : 
on Sicilian soil Athens received her most 
disabling blow, and here too the Punic 
power was broken ; yet there is hardly 
one among the battlefields of Sicily upon 
which greater destinies have been settled 
than on this field of Calatafimi. 

Before the morning was far advanced 
we started out in search of the village 
cure, the unfailing friend of strangers, 
that we might inquire of him about the 
safety of visiting the ruin and in regard 
to the pleasantest way of reaching it. 
Picking our way about through the mud 
of the squalid village, we at length found 
the old gentleman just coming from his 
little church on the side of the castle hill 
at the end of the town. Filled with un- 
feigned delight that the monotony of his 
existence should be broken by the ad- 
vent of two foreigners, especially such 
living wonders as Americans, the benigt. 
priest took a lively interest in our case 
gave us the information for which wt.*^ 
had asked, vouching for the safety oi 
the country, and begged us to walk on 
with him. For five minutes we followed 
on together the road cut in the hillside 
beneath the walls of the Saracenic cita- 
del, our companion all the while talking 
vehemently, and helping out our lame 
knowledge of the language with gestures 
so dramatic that an understanding of his 
words was hardly needed. Suddenly the 
road curved round the side of the hill ; 
we stood on the floor of a deserted quar- 
ry ; the old man ceased speaking and 
pointed forward: "Ecco /" Before us the 
hill dropped abruptly down in a preci- 
pice : far belov/ a deep valley spread out 
before our eyes, "fair as the garden of 
the Lord." As the light of the morning 
sun streamed down through its length 
bringing out in great brilliancy the fresh 
green of spring, it looked like a paradise 
of luxuriant vegetation. The gray of 
olive trees and the darkness of orange- 
groves contrasted with the color of spring- 
ing plants, and everywhere were scatter- 
ed the pink-and- white plumes of the blos- 
soming almonds. Beyond the valley a 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



rugged, saddle-shaped mountain rose to 
an imposing height, and upon the sum- 
mit - Une stood in sohtary majesty the 
Doric temple of Segesta, each column in 
•clear relief against the blue of the sky. 
It is so far removed from all abodes of 
men, standing alone for thousands of 
years in the region of the clouds — so 
grand in its severe and noble outlines — 
so venerable in its mysterious antiquity 
— so blended with the natural beauties of 
the place, — that it seems rather to belong 
to the power that raised the mountains 
than to any workmanship of man. The 
world cannot show a more wonderful ex- 
ample of art exquisitely harmonized with 
the grandeur of natural scenery. 

Eager for a closer view of the temple, 
we returned immediately to the town, and, 
being provided with a guide and a beast, 
were soon on the way down the winding 
road to the valley. A bridle-path diverged 
from the main road : an avenue of over- 
arching olive trees shaded the way, and 
■on all sides here, as everywhere through 
the country, the orange -crop loaded the 
trees almost to breaking — the most beau- 
tiful of all crops as the fruit hangs upon 
the branches. As we passed the lower 
-slopes dotted with browsing sheep, and 
began the rugged ascent of the mountain 
■on which the temple stands, the pathway 
•crept up the edge of a profound gorge : it 
was a perilous way, clinging close to the 
■edge of the bank, and at some points, 
where we could look down a thousand 
feet to the torrent below, the path was so 
narrow and broken that even our sure- 
footed mountain-donkeys hesitated to ad- 
vance. The picturesque but hard climb 
at length came to an end at the edge of 
the broad, flattened summit of the moun- 
tain. Again the temple suddenly came in 
sight, but now near at hand. The moun- 
tain - shepherds have planted with wheat 
the level of the summit, and the pale yel- 
low of the volcanic rock from which the 
temple is built harmonizes well with the 
•color of its surroundings. It cannot be 
called a ruin. It stands as the builders 
left it in the fifth century before Christ. 
Not a column is broken, not a stone has 
fallen. The interior was never finished, 
ibut the outside is perfect. 



The pure outlines of a Doric temple 
are beautiful in any situation, but the 
impression which this one made upon us 
in the bright morning sunlight, standing 
in the midst of verdure and flowers on 
the brink of that stupendous chasm and 
overlooking that glorious country, is not 
a thing to be conveyed in words. 

The interest of the temple is comprised 
in its size, antiquity and beauty, for no 
mention of it is made in history. Its ap- 
proximate age is inferred from the inter- 
nal evidence of the structure. The sub- 
jection of the city of Segesta from B. c. 
409 to the powers of Carthage and Rome 
successively, and the subsequent decline 
of its own power and wealth, render it 
certain that no such work as this temple 
would have been undertaken after that 
date : moreover, the purity of its simple 
Doric form places it in the earlier age? 
of Sicilian history The Carthaginiai. 
invasion of the island was doubtless the 
event which arrested the building. Cice- 
ro has described a wonderful statue of 
Diana in bronze which the people of 
Segesta showed him with pride as the 
greatest ornament of their city : it was 
of colossal size and faultless beauty, be- 
longing to the best period of Greek art. 
As the statue was in existence before the 
Carthaginian invasion, it seems to me 
highly improbable that the citizens of 
Segesta would have built so grand a 
temple for any other purpose than to 
enshrine their most admired and revered 
statue and to make it a place of worship 
for Diana. This theory may explain in 
part the reason why the building was ar- 
rested, for it is known that the image was 
stolen to adorn the city of Carthage,* and 
its loss, as well as the subsequent poverty 
of Segesta, would have been a sufficient 
reason for ceasing to build a temple to 
contain it. Diana's worshippers of old 
must have looked upon these lovely 
mountain - ranges as an abode dear to 
the queen of the nymphs and the hunt- 
er's patron deity. It seems as if noth- 
ing less than the presence of the moun- 
tain-goddess lingering round her shrine 
could have kept the temple in its mar- 
vellous perfection through the lapse of 

* The statue was restored to Segesta by Scipio. 



l82 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



ages in a land of wars and earthquakes. 
The houses of the neighboring city are 
indistinguishably levelled with the earth, 
but hardly a stone of the sacred building 
is displaced. 

The position of the temple was outside 
and below the limits of the ancient city. 
The mountain-ridge rises near at hand 
to a somewhat greater height, and ter- 
minates in a peak, on the summit and 
sides of which the town was built. Warn- 
ed by the decline of the sun, we turned 
from the Segestan house of worship and 
began to climb the slope toward the Se- 
gestan place of amusement : the Greek 
theatre still remains with little loss or 
change. The ascent was interrupted by 
many lingering backward looks toward 
the grand colonnade as it appeared at 
fresh- points of view from above. Hardly 
a living creature appeared on the lonely 
heights, except that one wandering shep- 
herd, seeing the dress of foreigners, came 
forward to offer his little stock of coins 
ploughed from the earth or found in an- 
cient buildings. As usual, most of the 
pocketful were corroded beyond recog- 
nition, but one piece bore a noble head 
executed in the Greek style, and the clear 
inscription, 11 A NOP MIT A N, a coin of 
Panormus; which is, in modern speech, 
Palermo. A few coppers were accepted 
as an ample equivalent for a coin which 
will not circulate. 

The scattered fragments of a fortress 
crown the peak ; and immediately be- 
low, cut in the solid rock of the western 
slope, lies the theatre. It is not large as 
compared with buildings of its class at 
Athens and Syracuse, yet I believe that 
in its seating capacity it exceeds any 
opera-house of our time. Entering by 
a ruined stage -door and crossing the 
orchestra, we rested on the lower tiers 
of seats. The great arc, comprising two- 
thirds of a circle, upon which the spec- 
tators were ranged, has still its covering 
of fine cut -stone seats, complete except 
at one extremity. Every part of the des- 
olate building gains a new interest when 
peopled in imagination with its ancient 
occupants, and when we recall to mind 
the vast multitudes of many generations 
who have watched with breathless and 



solemn interest the stately progress of 
Greek tragedy before that ruined scena. 

As we lounged upon the lowest seats, 
whereon the high dignitaries of the town 
used to sit, and looked across *he open 
space of the orchestra, there at the cen- 
tre of its farther side lay the slab which 
supported the altar of Bacchus, where 
stood the chorus -leader: near it a line 
of stone marks the front of the stage, 
and beyond it is spread an expanse of 
stage -scenery such as no modern royal 
theatre can boast. The whole broad 
prospect commanded from the colon- 
nade below is seen across the stage of 
the theatre, but widened by the greater 
height and finished in the foreground 
by the majestic presence of the temple. 
All the north - western mountains of the 
island are taken in with one glance of 
the eye : beneath us the valley of the 
little river Scamander opens a long vista 
northward to the Mediterranean Sea, and 
far away the port of Castellamare glitters, 
in contrast with the blue, as white as a 
polished shell upon the shore. Most dis- 
tant among the group of peaks is Mount 
Eryx, the lonely rock by the sea on whose 
summit stood the temple of Venus Ery- 
cina, more renowned in the ancient world 
than all other shrines of the goddess. 

We climbed to the brow of the hill in 
order to descend through the entire length 
of the city. Hardly one stone is left upon 
another of all the streets through which 
the Segestans proudly conducted Cicero. 
Here and there appear the circular open- 
ings of cisterns which occupied the centres 
of ancient courtyards. The stones once 
hewn and carved which are strewn over 
the slope are now reduced to the rough- 
ness of boulders, so that one might cross 
the tract and catch no sign that it was 
once a city. Little has been done to dis- 
cover what remains lie beneath the sur- 
face, but at one point, where a small ex- 
cavation has been made, a heap of fall- 
en Ionic columns cover the fragments of 
a tomb built on a scale of regal magnif- 
icence ; and a little lower on the moun- 
tain two rooms of a house have been ex- 
humed, the floors of which are still cov- 
ered with beautiful mosaics. 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



183 



PART II. 




A, B, C, D, temples of the acropolis ; E, F, G, temples of the neapolis ; I, I, walls of ancient harbor. 

SELINUS. 



NOT many miles from the western 
cape of Sicily twin bluffs rise side 
by side vertically from the southern sea. 
Their sloping sides are separated by a 
river : their parallel ridges, running in- 
land, are lost in the high adjacent moor- 
land. On the crests of the cliffs, one 
hundred feet above the sea, stood the 
acropolis and the neapolis of Selinus, 
two divisions of the great and free Greek 
city which once held sway in all this 
quarter of the island. 

The lapse of two thousand years has so 
changed the outline of this southern coast 
that now no natural harbor offers an an- 
chorage safe from the violence of the 
sirocco ; but a deep valley cuts in half 
the cliff-built city, and in old times an 
inlet ran up from the sea to meet the 
valley-brook. This narrow inlet, deep- 
ened and improved with all the skill of 
ancient engineering, was lined with mas- 
sive quays. Selinus was strong in ships 
of war, but the citizens of the great com- 
mercial town must have looked with not 
less satisfaction on the multitudinous fleet 
of m.erchant-craft that whitened the wa- 
ters of their bay, and brought to them 
from all foreign lands the wealth which 



they lavishly bestowed in adorning their 
homes and in building up the temples 
of their gods. Along the edge of the 
port were ranged, of course, the lines 
of warehouses essential to an extensive 
foreign trade, but no vestiges of the an- 
cient town are seen along the valley, for 
the malarial dampness of the lowlands 
drove the population to the sides and 
summits of the enclosing bluffs. 

Imagine the beauty of a town thus 
situated! Range above range on the 
two hills rose the outlying villas and the 
more crowded dwellings of the town. We 
know from one admiring epithet of Vir- 
gil's that these ancient houses of Selinus 
were overshadowed by groups of palm 
trees. What lovely homes they were ! 
Filled with all luxuries that endless 
wealth could buy, adorned with the skill 
of Grecian art — which in our day we 
wonder at and imitate, but never hope 
to equal — the houses were so placed upon 
the hill that the patrician landowner from 
his shaded roof might watch far up the 
valley -roads the lines of heavy-laden 
beasts bringing down for export the pro- 
ducts of his estates, and the merchant 
from the terrace of his home, looking 



1 84 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



across the sea toward Africa, could catch 
the most distant glimmer of the sails of 
his corn - freighted ships bringing back 
wealth to him from the Carthaginian 
markets. 

By far the greater part of the ancient 
population gathered around the acropolis 
on the western hill. Above the dwellings 
of the slope a theatre and other public 
buildings rose conspicuously ; and higher 
still, all along the edge of the broad and 
flattened summit, the massive city-wall 
enclosed the acropolis, lifting against 
the background of blue sky its diadem 
of towers. But the chief features which 
made Selinus famous for its beauty in 
the ancient world were its temples. 

On the highest crest of the acropolis 
stood side by side three Doric temples, 
facing the rising sun, while across the 
harbor, on the corresponding western 
height, three other temples, even greater 
and more splendid, were built to perfect 
the symmetry of the magnificent city. 
Some of these temples glittered in snowy 
whiteness: others, in contrast, were re- 
lieved with many bands and ornaments 
of gorgeous colors — colors so brilliant 
and enduring that to this day they best 
reveal to us the beauty of the Grecian 
polychromic style. Some were of most 
venerable age, coeval with the colony 
itself, while others, built with more fin- 
ished art, were barely completed at the 
downfall of the city. One bore on its 
front the earliest works of the Greek 
chisel which are known in our time : 
another, on the opposite height, dis- 
played on its lofty frieze the batdes of 
the giants wrought in the archaic but 
spirited style of a century later. Above 
the turmoil of the surrounding city the 
sacred buildings stood apart in two ma- 
jestic ranks within their own consecrated 
grounds : the tumultuous noise of the town 
came from a distance, and, mingling with 
the roar of the sea that beat the rocks a 
hundred feet below, echoed through the 
sacred quiet of the colonnades. All the 
temples of these two groups towered so 
high upon the cliffs that peasants labor- 
ing on the inland plain or shepherds on 
the distant hillside might always keep in 
sight the sacred buildings which sym- 



bolized to them the greatness of their 
gods. Mariners sailing on the African 
Sea, between the east and the west of 
the ancient world, might discern, even 
far out upon the sea, the innumerable 
columns rising upon the hilltops. 

Such was the aspect of Selinus in 
the time of its grandeur five hundred 
years before Christ. In the year 409 
B. c. a Carthaginian army under Han- 
nibal, son of Gisco, besieged Selinus. 
For nine days the Selinuntians made a 
brave resistance, and then the city fell. 
The people were butchered or sold, the 
walls destroyed, the temples plundered. 
Afterward the town revived, and led a 
feeble existence for another century ; but 
now for two thousand years the ground 
has been desolate, a terror to all set- 
tlers from the miasma which haunts the 
marshes. 

The pleasure of visiting these ruins 
cannot be attained without paying a 
penalty. Three times a week a small 
vehicle connects at Calatafimi with the 
stage-coach from Palermo, carrying the 
mails to the southern parts of the island. 
" Darkly at dead of night " we were sud- 
denly transferred — out of the frying-pan 
into the fire — from the poor consolation 
of a Sicilian bed to the utter discom- 
fort of a nondescript conveyance bound 
for Castelvetrano. However, much trav- 
elling teaches how to sleep through all 
circumstances, and broken repose came 
in spite of much lurching and many 
bumps. When at last we were roused 
by the breaking day, our road had al- 
ready passed from the mountainous in- 
terior into a rolling country. The sun 
rose into the cloudless and pure bril- 
liancy of a winter sky, and lighted up 
a land carpeted with soft green. The 
slopes became by degrees more gentle 
as we approached the southern coast, 
till at last we reached a plain, and came 
to the queer old town of Castelvetrano 
standing in the midst of it. It would be 
hard to find in all Europe another large 
town as much cut off from the world. 
As we alighted from the coach in the 
central piazza the throng of men in out- 
landish costumes politely made room for 
us to pass, but attempted no conceal- 



A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



185 



ment of their curiosity at the sight of 
foreigners. An inspection of the hotel- 
book in the only locanda of the place 
showed that for nearly a year no Amer- 
ican or English traveller had visited this 
region, so powerful is the danger of ban- 
ditti and the certainty of bad lodging to 
keep away visitors from the grandest 
group of temples in Europe. 

There is a peculiar pleasure in pass- 
ing from the chief lines of travel into the 
less-frequented parts of the Italian king- 
dom, for otherwise it is hardly possible to 
meet familiarly with the educated middle 
class and to understand the best side of 
the Italian character. In the cities of the 
Peninsula the better class of inhabitants 
shrinks from contact with the promiscuous 
horde of foreigners which every winter 
pours down upon them from the North ; 
but in these remote towns of Sicily the 
freemasonry of good -breeding is strong 
in the narrow circle who share in it ; and 
an educated foreigner, even though he 
may have no introductions, can hardly 
remain long without receiving many kind 
attentions. A pleasant instance of this 
national courtesy we met in Castelve- 
trano. A gentleman of the town volun- 
teered to take the walk of eight miles 
to Selinunto that we migbt have his gui- 
dance through the ruins. His thorough 
acquaintance with the place gave addi- 
tional interest to the excursion. 

A flourishing notice posted in the town 
declared to travellers that the govern- 
ment had just completed a highway to 
the ruins. It was a pleasing surprise, 
suggestive of an hour's drive in an easy 
carriage instead of a long jog on donkey- 
back ; but no such pleasure was in store. 
In all the town of twenty thousand in- 
habitants no wheeled vehicle could be 
had for love or money. The only con- 
veyance for passengers or freight is on 
the backs of animals. 

I have dwelt upon the beauty of Se- 
linus as it was, yet it must be acknow- 
ledged that now its buildings are inferior 
in beauty to the perfect temples of Gir- 
genti, Segesta or Paestum. They cannot 
boast of colonnades unharmed by the 
lapse of ages, but even though pros- 
trated the Selinuntian temples are a 



more interesting study than even those 
of Paestum, and display more richness 
of ornament and more grandeur of de- 
sign than any other Sicilian ruins. 

The temples seem to have outlasted 
the sieges and vicissitudes of the city : 
even its final destruction left them still 
standing in desolation upon the heights. 
At last some terrible but unrecorded 
earthquake shook these hills to their 
foundations, and the columns which had 
withstood the wear of ages fell by hun- 
dreds in one catastrophe. Not one re- 
mained unbroken. 

For seven miles we plodded across the 
plain. The road runs straight through a 
succession of olive-farms, and is border- 
ed here and there with cork trees, but 
there are few habitations or other signs 
of life. Far away we hear the roar of 
the surf, and soon a lovely column with- 
out a capital rises above the dark foliage 
against the darker sky: then half an hour 
more of tramping brings us to the sum- 
mit of the eastern bluff and into the ruins 
of the neapolis. There is a curious irony 
in the name of the place — the neapolis — 
the "new city" ! It has been a desolate 
heap of ruins for two thousand years, 
yet the neighboring acropolis was old 
when even this was new. 

I am glad to have seen Selinunto as it 
was on that day. The gloomy landscape 
was in keeping with the aspect of the 
desolated city. The sea bellowed loud 
on the rocks below, and, stretching away 
southward to an horizon indefinite with 
mist and rain, its whole expanse was 
lashed into white-caps. To the east the 
coast extended in curves of yellow beach 
miles away to the heights of San Marco, 
half hidden from sight by a transparent 
veil of showers. The plain and the in- 
land mountain -ranges were black with 
the shadows of low -brooding clouds, 
while around us on the cliffs were strewn 
the tokens of departed splendor, complet- 
ing the grim desolation of the prospect. 

The temple which we first approach is 
the most northern of the neapolis, by long 
usage designated by the letter G. It is 
the most ruinous, the most recent, and by 
far the greatest, of the Selinuntian tem- 
ples. No sacred building in the Greek 



i86 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



world surpassed it in size except the tem- 
ple of Diana at Ephesus and that of Jove 
at Agrigentum. It is the only one of the 



group which seems to have been wreck- 
ed by human agency : probably the Car- 
thaginian army, made furious by long 




resistance, spent their rage in overthrow- 
ing the greatest pride of the humiliated 
city. In the other temples drums and 
capitals lie in long lines side by side, as 



they fell levelled by one blow, and their 
plan can easily be traced ; but here ev- 
erything has toppled down in a confused 
mound of ruins : the walls and columns, 



A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



187 



formed of some of the hugest masses of 
stone ever wrought by men, pediments, 
entablatui 3S, capitals and triglyphs, have 
been hurled into a shapeless heap, while 
a lofty but imperfect column stands alone 
in the midst of the wreck. We stopped 
by the side of the ruin to notice one of 
the capitals which lies flat upon the 
ground with the square abacus upward. 
Our companion called it "the dancing- 
floor." The peasants from the country 
around come here to the Pillars of the 
Giants, as they call them, and hold their 
rustic jollifications. This is the dancing- 
ground. The huge slab lies nearly four- 
teen feet square, making room for a coun- 
try-dance of several couples. 

The drums which compose these tower- 
like Doric columns lie scattered about : 
their diameter is so great that as they 
lie upon one side one can scarcely reach 
their centre, and as they stand upright 
one's back fits comfortably to the curve 
of the enormous flutes. The difficulty of 
transporting such masses of stone must 
have been enormous, and yet scores of 
such columns supported the roof, making 
a colonnade one thousand feet in circuit. 

It would have been occupation enough 
for a day to study this one ruin and puz- 
zle out the plan of the building ; but the 
brooding clouds broke at last, and the 
irresistible violence of the shower sent 
us flying to the next temple, where a 
shelter is made by broken masses of 
stone piled up at the rear of the edifice. 
In a kind of cavern walled and roofed 
with Doric fragments we sat down to 
pass a rainy half hour over the cleanest 
and most delicate viands that the restau- 
rateurs of Castelvetrano could furnish — 
hard-boiled eggs, olives and wine. It 
was a curious dining-room. The rub- 
bish of ages has only of late years been 
cleared away, exposing the long-buried 
surface of the stones, which still retains 
uninjured the coating of fine-grained 
stucco, and bears many traces of the 
red and green colors which relieved 
the whiteness of the surface. 

This central temple of the eastern hill 
is very similar in size and shape to its 
near neighbor on the right — so much so 
that it is natural to regard them as a pair. 



They are commonly designated by the 
letters F and E respectively. An in- 
scription lately exhumed on the spot 
indicates that the former was sacred to 
Hera : what divinity was worshipped in 
the latter is unknown. Both were of 
pure Doric architecture, and lacked but 
a few feet to equal in length the Parthe- 
non of Athens. Both were adorned with 
metopes sculptured in relief representing, 
with the vigor of the archaic Greek style, 
the battles of the gods and giants. Both 
were finished with many ornaments of 
color, and bear to this day on their deli- 
cate mouldings much of the red, black and 
yellow with which they were adorned. 

As we have come to the threshold, en- 
ter with me one of these Greek temples. 
We descend by a slight incline from the 
present surface of the ground to the old 
level, and stand at the foot of the temple- 
steps. A flight of magnificent breadth 
ascends to a stone-paved level, and be- 
yond that another flight, as wide as the 
temple-front, brings us to the colonnade. 
We pass between the bases of two fallen 
columns : on either hand rise the broken 
shafts of unequal heights, but the posi- 
tion of even the fallen one is clear from 
some standing fragment. We are within 
the porch of the temple. Through an- 
other line of columns we pass within the 
cella, the holy place of the temple. There 
is much sombre picturesqueness about 
the interior. On the right and left shafts 
rise in broken gray ranges, and beyond 
the walls are seen other columns lying 
on the ground, prostrate but perfect. 
There is no vestige of a roof overhead, 
but the low - driving clouds match with 
the color of the masonry and seem al- 
most to rest upon the ruins. The floor 
of the sacred apartment by the zeal of 
antiquaries has been cleared of its long 
accumulations, except that some frag- 
ments, thrown inward by the earth- 
quake, lie as they fell. We walk with- 
out obstruction through the great length 
of the consecrated room, though around 
us fallen triglyphs and fluted drums lie 
here and there upon the pavement. We 
reach at last the farther end of the sacred 
hall, where we find the altar of the god- 
dess in its old position, while beyond it is 



A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



the pedestal from which her image is 
gone. Beside the altar we stoop to no- 
tice the channels cut in the floor to col- 
lect the streaming blood of the victim. 

Some feeling of awe in this place is 
irresistible. The impression of solitude 
and hoary antiquity brought a sense of 
reverence for the place almost like that 
which the suppliant of old times might 
have felt when advancing through the 
temple to throw himself before the altar. 
To stand in the temple and at the very 
altar of Hera, to see the spot where, 
carved in marble, the haughty goddess 
stood, brings up with wonderful vivid- 
ness all the old heathen worship. Even 
a dull imagination can picture the priest 
at the altar, the burning victim, the bend- 
ing worshipper. Men, struggling and 
tempted, have come here to seek from 
Heaven redress of wrong, expiation of 
sin, divine aid for human weakness. 
And who can know that their cries were 
not heard and answered from Heaven ? 
They worshipped ignorantly, but they 
perished from the earth centuries be- 
fore the Child was born in Bethlehem 
of Judea. 

The interest of this temple was so great 
that it was hard to allow a fair share of 
time for the acropolis, but it must be seen 
"now or never." So we were obliged to 
turn our backs on the neapolis, and hurry 
down the precipitous slope across the val- 
ley for half a mile, and then up through 
a gateway in the prostrate city-wall to the 
summit of the western cliff. 

Here, as on the other height, Doric 
remains lie in confusion about us, and 
on all sides is spread out the same wild 
landscape. The buildings are so utterly 
overthrown that a general view is only 
perplexing ; but as we stood gazing there 
emerged from the ruined temples the man 
whose presence is most to be desired in 
this place — Signor Cavallari, the best 
authority on Sicilian antiquities. 

A careful excavation of the acropolis 
has been carried forward by government 
within the last year under the superin- 
tendence of Signor Cavallari. From the 
point of excavation to the edge of the 
cliff a little railroad was laid in order that 
the debris might be discharged into the 



sea ; and already the digging had so far 
advanced that the old chief thoroughfare 
of the town, passing at the rear of the 
temples, was laid bare for many rods. 
It was a privilege adding vastly to the 
interest of the place to explore the an- 
cient city under such guidance, to walk 
over the pavement trodden by the con- 
quering army of Hannibal, to wander 
among the temples where every stone 
was known to our leader, to notice the 
appliances of the heathen worship still 
remaining, while we listened to the story 
of Cavallari's rich discoveries from his 
own lips. 

There is so much similarity of design 
in all pure Doric temples that a descrip- 
tion of each one upon the acropolis would 
become tedious. The chief claim to 
special interest which these possess is 
their extreme antiquity, for it is believed 
that no trace exists of any older Doric 
temple, unless it be in one group of col- 
umns standing on the Plain of Corinth. 
Certain peculiarities of architecture in 
the temples marked upon the plans by 
the letters C and D show that they were 
completed before the establishment of 
the Doric canon in architecture. Their 
age is plainly greater than that of the 
other buildings, and C is probably the 
older of the two, for the hideous sculp- 
tured metopes exhumed among its frag- 
ments are the earliest and rudest works 
of the Greek chisel which have ever 
come to light. No doubt it is almost 
coeval with the city, and was founded 
twenty-five centuries ago. 

The temporary home of the venerable 
antiquary is in a little stone cabin, snug 
but primitive in its arrangements, which 
is perched on the very edge of the crag. 
Under its roof, while we were fortified 
with hot coffee to face again the chilly 
storm, we were feasted with our host's 
discourse of his travels and discoveries 
— of ancient Greece and Young Amer- 
ica ; of adventures in Yucatan, and un- 
easy nights passed in the crater of 
Etna while aiding Baron Sartorius in 
preparing his work on that volcano. All 
the pauses of the conversation were fill- 
ed with the solemn music of the sea 
rhythmically beating on the crag far be- 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



neath our feet. With the fading of light 
we passed outside the city-wall and down 
across the old harbor, which is now dry 
land. There we parted from our enter- 
tainer, leaving him standing on the sea- 
shore in the light of the low sun, which 
broke from the clouds at setting. It was 
a venerable but erect figure, clad in a 
graceful Italian cloak ; a fine face and 
head, beautified by snow - white hair — 
a presence in harmony with the hoary 
grandeur of the buildings among which 
he dwells and labors. 

To penetrate the country lying east of 
Castelvetrano is no easy matter. There 
is no steam communication, no diligence, 
no carriage to be hired, no road, nor can 
anything deserving the name of a sad- 
dle be obtained. Two flattened lumps 
of white rags were bound to the backs 
of two raw-boned horses : on the top of 
these our baggage, ourselves and our 
two drivers were stacked up in a man- 
ner peculiar to the country. For twenty- 
seven weary miles we rode with unstir- 
ruped feet across wild moors, through 
fords made dangerous by the recent 
storm, and over long reaches of sea- 
beach, till, mounting the promontory of 
San Marco, we came under the walls of 
Sciacca. 

The mediaeval remains of Sciacca are 
worthy to receive some attention from a 
traveller, but with the light of the next 
day came a clear sky and west wind, 
making it possible to continue the jour- 
ney toward Girgenti by a sailboat — too 
good a chance to be lost by delay. A 
zigzag path, steep as a stairway, descend- 
ed from the city to the sea. Attended by 
two wizened fishermen, who bent beneath 
a load of boat-supplies, we came down to 
the shore, and then, without delay, our 
pretty little craft rushed impetuously out 
to the open sea. It was only a rough 
fishing-boat, yet the grace of the lateen 
sail and the quaint costumes of the skip- 
per and his man seemed got up for scenic 
effect. An exhilarating wind blew fresh 
out of the west, sending us on our course 
with the speed of a bird. 

We continued looking back on the town 
we had left until it faded in the distance. 
I have not seen in any country so beau- 



tiful a site as that of Sciacca. A range 
of bare stone peaks, which glowed with 
many tints in the morning light, rose be- 
hind the city from bases of rich verdure ; 
on either hand promontories shut off the 
violence of the waves ; the sea was blue 
with that brilliancy not known in our 
Northern waters. In the centre of the 
scene towers the city, built on the edge 
of an enormous rock, the massive and 
battlemented town -wall pierced by im- 
posing gateways ; and the towers and 
palaces rising above it give an impres- 
sion of majesty which is enhanced by the 
height of the cliff. It is like one of those 
ancient fortresses that we see in Dore's 
fantastic pictures — a citadel of the Mid- 
dle Ages, fit to be the home of crusaders. 
For many miles at sea the gleam of its 
white walls is unmistakable. 

Far beneath a blazing vault, 
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill. 
The city sparkles like a grain of salt. 

The whole sail of forty miles from 
Sciacca to the port of Girgenti, follow- 
ing the line of the coast, is a panorama 
of delightful pictures. Cliffs and beaches, 
mountains and rolling country, flew past 
us alternately as we ran along steadily 
at nine knots. Our skipper was a man 
of incomprehensible tongue, but at the 
start he pointed significantly to the figure 
2 on my watch-dial, and, true to his word, 
before that hour we came to Porto Em- 
pedocle, the harbor of Girgenti, and, 
riding ashore on the fishermen's shoul- 
ders, were unceremoniously dumped on 
the beach. 

As viewed from the sea, the town seem- 
ed near at hand, for it is most conspic- 
uous, standing on a ridge a thousand 
feet above, yet even by rail it is almost 
an hour's journey, for the grades are 
tremendous and the road of course wind- 
ing. This railway will soon be complet- 
ed to Palermo, and then it is to be hoped 
that Girgenti will become familiar to trav- 
ellers ; for, excepting Athens, there is 
hardly another place which so abounds 
in Greek antiquities. Now the remote 
ruins of Egypt are better known to the 
travelling public than the remains of 
Acragas. 

The present town of Girgenti occupies 



IQO 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



the height which was the citadel of the 
Greek Acragas and the Roman Agri- 
gentum. Below the town, on the south, 
lies an undulating plateau which was over- 



spread by the ancient city, and beyond 
that the mountain -side slopes abruptly 
to the sea. When at last our train had 
climbed the mountain and we were run- 




ning at better speed across this plateau, 
the early winter sun was already setting, 
and here and there lovely pictures, framed 
with rocks and green trees, flashed be- 



fore our eyes, visions of majestic Greek 
buildings casting across the green sward 
the long shadows of evening, and, most 
beautiful of all, one superb Doric temple, 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



191 



unmarred by time, with the soft yellow 
of its colon lade transformed to the bril- 
liancy of gold by the flood of dying sun- 
shine. From the station there is yet a 
long ascent by carriage to the town, and 
it was dusk when we passed the city-gate 
and drove up through the length of the 
main thoroughfare — a dark street, rather 
narrow and less clean than could be de- 
sired, but at every corner the eye was 
charmed with glimpses down the slop- 
ing side-streets, for each glimpse reveal- 
ed a view bounded only by the horizon : 
the eye runsbeyond the town-walls, across 
the fields and down the slope to the sea, 
a thousand feet below. 

Girgenti is picturesque when you are a 
few miles from it, but the enchantment 
of distance is needed to enjoy it: within 
the walls it is agreeable neither to the eye 
nor nose. The population is mewed up 
within the limits of the mediseval forti- 
fications, and therefore all buildings are 
closely packed and run high in air, mak- 
ing the streets appear like the poor quar- 
ters of a dense metropolis. There is hard- 
ly a trace to be found within the town of 
the ancient citadel which stood upon the 
same hill. 

To the vast majority of readers whose 
classical studies are rusty the name of 
Acragas conveys a rather vague image. 
Perhaps the thought arises that some 
such town, whose situation is but half 
remembered, was a rival of the more 
famous Syracuse : perhaps with it are 
associated thoughts of Theron, the ideal 
despot, or of Phalaris, most infamous of 
tyrants. The city which men of our age 
have so much forgotten was in its time 
vast, populous, rich, magnificent. Half 
a million of souls, it is thought, dwelt 
within its walls : in luxury it rivalled 
Sybaris ; in power it was second only 
to Syracuse among the Greek colonies. 
It was of the citizens of Acragas that 
Empedocles said that they built as if 
they hoped to live for ever, and lived as 
if they thought to die to-morrow. Pindar 
rapturously calls Acragas " the fairest of 
mortal cities." Nor was its glory that of 
mere barbaric magnificence and power. 
The boundless wealth of its rulers and 
citizens was spent to advance high art. 



Except Athens, hardly another Greek 
city could boast of more perfect culture. 
Here was the home of famous statesmen, 
artists, philosophers. Theron and Em- 
pedocles were men of Acragas : works 
of Zeuxis and Myron adorned the line 
of temples which were the glory of the 
city. 

The rise of Acragas to the zenith of its 
power was astonishingly rapid. Found- 
ed by colonists from Gela in the year 580 
B. c, in little more than one century it 
advanced to a degree of influence which 
in later times it could never equal. It 
can hardly be doubted that the swift ad- 
vancement of the young colony was due 
in a great degree to the skilful govern- 
ment of the tyrant Phalaris. When the 
city was but ten years old he usurped the 
supreme power by the appropriation and 
free use of funds entrusted to him, and 
ruled the people with a rod of iron for 
twelve years. That he governed with 
skill is certain from the great material 
prosperity of the city under his control. 
He seems to have been a patron of let- 
ters and the fine arts, and in his time Ac- 
ragas grew in power and magnificence ; 
but this is almost forgotten by the an- 
cient writers, who rarely mention him 
except in connection with the brazen 
bull in which he is said to have roast- 
ed his enemies. 

Acragas owed much to Phalaris, but 
more to Theron, who extended the do- 
minions of the city across the island to 
the Tyrrhene Sea, and in company with 
Gelon destroyed the vast fleet of Car- 
thage on the day most memorable in the 
history of Greek civilization ; for on that 
day, it is said, the strength of the African 
city was shattered by Theron, while, un- 
known to him, Themistocles was con- 
quering the Asiatic hordes of Xerxes at 
Salamis. 

The victory of Himera brought Acra- 
gas to the highest point of her grandeur : 
wealth poured into the city, luxury in- 
creased. The army of Carthaginian pris- 
oners reduced to slavery was employed 
by the government in building the tem- 
ples and other public works which made 
the city one of the most splendid that 
have ever existed, and which even aftei 



192 



A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



two thousand years astonish every visitor 
to their ruins. For nearly a century more 
the prosperity of Acragas was uninter- 
rupted, but in the year 406 b. c. the Car- 
thaginian army, fresh from the destruc- 
tion of Selinus, came upon the city, and 
after a fearful siege it fell. Some years 
afterward Timoleon rebuilt Acragas, and 
again it became flourishing, but never re- 
covered its former greatness ; and in the 



Roman period it was a town of small im- 
portance. 

A warm evening and a full moon were 
strong temptations to make a visit to the 
temples on our first night in Girgenti, 
for first impressions of a ruined city can 
never be so charming as in the full moon- 
light ; but the distance to the old south- 
ern wall by which the ruins stand seemed 
too great after a fatiguing day of travel- 




TOMB OF THERON. 



ling, and a prudent citizen strongly ad- 
vised against venturing out of the city- 
gates at night. The value of the warn- 
ing appeared on the following morning, 
for some event drew a multitude of coun- 
trymen into the town, and the main street 
was half full of the most savage-looking 
ruffians I have ever met. 

Grote expends some pity on the de- 
feated Agrigentines, because, in addition 
to the horrors of the siege, they were 



driven from their homes on a December 
night. If their sufferings were from cold, 
it must have been a very different winter 
day from that on which I first walked 
through the ancient city. Under a bla- 
zing afternoon sun we followed a rough 
footpath which leads most directly from 
the town to the ruins, down over ledges 
of bare rock which radiated an intense 
heat. Here, as elsewhere about the tity, 
a vast extent of the shelving rocks is hon- 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



193 



eycombed with graves. They have long 
been emptied of their contents, but the 
myriads of them that are found give a 
clew by which the huge population of 
Acragas can be estimated. So about Se- 
linus, Syracuse and other ancient cities 
the graves and memorials of the dead 
are always amazing in multitude. 

After this first declivity our path for 
two or three miles undulated across the 
rolling land once wholly covered by the 
city. It is a well-cultivated country, plant- 
ed with olive, orange and almond trees, 
but there are few antique remains to ar- 
rest the attention. A lofty ruin, which 
stands on a height to the west, we pass- 
ed without a visit : it is a Saracenic bath, 
and can claim an antiquity of only one 
thousand years, which in this part of the 
world is a very insignificant age. The 
farm -walls which border our way seem 
to be largely built of antique materials : 
much of the stone is wrought, and here 
and there an elegant fluted column is 
piled on roughly, like the glacial bould- 
ers around our Northern farms. As we 
approach the southern boundary of the 
Greek city the evidences of ancient life 
are seen more and more : around the 
wayside convent of Santo Nicola are 
strewn architectural fragments of great 
beauty which have been dug from the 
fields. But while traversing for miles 
the site of Acragas hardly a standing 
wall or column of its ten thousand build- 
ings is seen till we come upon the temple 
of Juno Lucina, situated at the south- 
eastern angle of the plateau. 

The position of this temple was quite 
the most beautiful in the city. The great 
natural platform on which Acragas was 
built is bounded on the seaward side 
by a short precipice, beyond which the 
mountain slopes steeply to the shore. 
This long, low cliff extends from east to 
west for more than a mile, and, turning 
inland at right angles, formed the strong- 
est natural defence on three sides of the 
lower city. On the brow of this cliff five 
of the Agrigentine temples stood in line, 
overlooking, like the temples of Selinus, 
a wide extent of country, and, like them, 
seen far out at sea. 

It is at the angle where this precipitous 
13 



boundary turns from east to west that the 
ruined temple of Juno stands. Jts remains 
are full of dignity and beauty. It is ruin- 
ed, but not prostrate. Earthquakes and 
other destroying agencies of time have 
shattered the walls, and the pavement 
and cornice have disappeared, but all 
the columns of the northern line are 
perfect, still bearing the architrave upon 
their capitals. The shafts of the south- 
ern side, roughened by centuries of the 
south wind from Africa, are less regular : 
many have lost their capitals, and some 
have fallen. So much remains of the 
building that the plan and dimensions 
are evident at a glance, and yet the 
marks of time are so unmistakable that 
even when seen at a distance of miles, 
towering upon its pedestal of rock, the 
rugged outline of the ruin always sug- 
gests the thought of its immense an- 
tiquity. 

The building belongs to the best period 
of Doric architecture, and must have been 
erected little less than five hundred years 
before Christ. It is called the temple of 
Juno, and, though we have not the best 
reasons for giving that name to the tem- 
ple, it is not improbable that this was the 
building which contained the picture of 
Juno for which, as Pliny relates, Zeuxis 
chose as his models the five most love- 
ly damsels of Acragas, combining their 
several beauties in one feminine figure of 
superhuman perfection. The picture of 
Juno was the great artist's masterpiece. 

The second temple of the line upon 
the cliff is seen to stand at a consider- 
able distance. The pathway to it follows 
the ancient city -wall, which in this part 
is a low parapet of enormous thickness 
crowning the verge of the precipice : it 
is not built up of stones, but is formed 
of the natural rock scarped on both sides. 
Along the wall are curious sepulchres of 
many chambers hewn in the rock. 

A walk of several hundred yards brought 
us near the so-called temple of Concord, 
a building of nearly the same age as the 
first temple. Unlike the other Greek 
structures of Sicily, the temple of Con- 
cord is not a ruin, nor is it, like the tem- 
ple of Segesta, unfinished. The front, 
which is first approached from the east. 



194 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



mmii'mm^m\\\^^\\ iiiii'iil"fl II '"'ll'lfi III) 




seems to be without flaw or blemish of 
any kind : there is but one other build- 
ing on the earth which has stood for 
twenty -four centuries with so little in- 



jury. The temple is a perfect example 
of the best Doric order — simple, yet full 
of grandeur. 

In coming upon an edifice so impos- 



A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



195 



ing and without any appearance of di- 
lapidation, it is a strange sensation to 
find only solitude and silence : it seems 
but natural to hope that some priest or 
worshipper may descend the steps ; but 
hardly a habitation is in sight except the 
white houses of the city gleaming far 
away upon the hill ; only the strong sea- 
wind, shaking the trees, breaks the quiet 
of the place ; no living creature is visible 
but passing flocks of birds. The temple 
cannot be approached without command- 
ing the deepest admiration of the behold- 
er : the perfect symmetry of the struc- 
ture, the look of repose and of unshaken 
strength, the simple inajesty of Greek art, 
the thought of its changeless existence 
through a score of centuries, give to it a 
sublimity equalled by fev/ architectural 
works. Yet, standing before the fault- 
less portico, it is not easy to realize that 
its columns were reared when the long 
drama of European history was just open- 
ing : they are still so unyielding in their 
strength that they seem destined to stand 
while the solid cliff below remains un- 
moved. 

To pass within the shade of the portico, 
and follow around the temple the long 
walk of the peristyle which runs be- 
tween the wall and the outer colonnade, 
increases the feeling of wonder at the 
marvellous preservation of the building. 
It explains in some degree the reason 
why it has been preserved to note the 
exquisite finish of the mason's work ; 
every stone is so finely fitted to its neigh- 
bors that a needle would hardly slide be- 
tween them. 

In passing from the portico to the cella 
of the temple the absence of a roof is first 
noticed : as it was supported in its place 
by beams of wood, it must have disap- 
peared when the building was compar- 
atively new ; but within, as without, the 
completeness of the temple is wonderful. 
The only alterations which have been 
made seem to be the removal of a par- 
tition which anciently divided the in- 
terior, and the cutting of arched open- 
ings in the walls for the admission of 
light. These changes were the result of 
adapting the heathen temple to the pur- 
poses of Christian worship. The extra- 



ordinary preservation of this most perfect 
monument of antiquity wfe owe to the 
medieval Christians, who dedicated it 
in honor of St. Gregorio delle Rape. A 
curious feature of the interior is the pair 
of spiral staircases at the corners of the 
edifice. They afford a safe and unbroken 
means of ascent to the top of the build- 
ing, but the hard stone of the steps is 
worn almost to a continuous slope by 
the tread of eighty generations of men. 
' Seated upon the top of the cornice, we 
lingered long to enjoy the most beautiful 
view that can be obtained in this region : 
it embraces the rolling country with its 
ruins, the modern city, the mountains 
and the sea. 

Continuing westward from the temple 
of Concord, we soon came upon the high- 
road leading to the port. It descends 
through the cliff from the plateau to the 
slope below by a broad inclined plane 
cut in the rock. It is a cutting of an- 
cient origin, for this was the great sea- 
gate of Acragas. Standing before the 
gateway, it is not hard to imagine it the 
most splendid entrance that any ancient 
city could boast, for on the one hand the 
ruined temple of Hercules lies on the 
verge of the cliff: on the other are the 
fragments of the Olympieum. 

As we stood before the gateway some 
solitary armed horsemen at long inter- 
vals, and now and then a group of load- 
ed mules toiling up toward Girgenti, were 
the only reminders of the roaring tide of 
traffic which in old times rushed through 
it. In those days the road to the sea was 
bordered by the mausoleums of the Ag- 
rigentine nobles, but the destruction of 
them began as far back as the Carthagin- 
ian siege of Acragas, when Hannibal the 
elder used them as quarries to aid his 
military operations. Some were spared, 
but the only trace of them all that now 
remains is a lonely tomb in the form of 
an Ionic tower, commonly called the 
"tomb of Theron." The magnificent 
mausoleum of Theron mentioned by old 
writers probably stood near this spot. 
It is said that its destruction, when com- 
manded by Hannibal, was arrested by a 
sign from Heaven ; but it is no longer 
standingf. That which is called Theron's 



196 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



tomb is a graceful but plain structure : 
the walls are simply adorned with sunk- 
en panels, and at the corners are four 
slender columns of the Ionic order ; but 
it corresponds in no way with the royal 
grandeur of Theron's tomb as described 
by Diodorus. 

The two temples which overlook the 
sea-gate, flanking it on either side, were 
the grandest architectural works of the 
city. That which stood upon the east- 
ern side is believed to be the temple 
of Hercules, referred to by Cicero in his 
charge against Verres. Its remains show 
it to have been a temple built after the 
usual Doric pattern, but with proportions 
of remarkable grandeur. It was little in- 
ferior to the Parthenon in size ; but, great 
as this building was, it was so dwarfed by 
the neighboring temple of Jupiter that 
we hear more of the works of art pre- 
served in it than of its own beauty. In 
regard to the statue of Hercules which 
it contained, Cicero, living among the 
collected art -treasures of Rome, gave 
this testimony: "I cannot say that I have 
ever looked on a thing more beautiful." 
Another work of even greater fame, en- 
shrined in this edifice, was the picture of 
Alcimene by Zeuxis. He painted it for 
the Agrigentines without recompense ; 
"For," he said, "the painting is price- 
less, therefore I will receive no price." 
The ruins of this temple are disappoint- 
ing to one just coming from a Greek 
building in perfect preservation. At first 
sight it seems but a mound of fragments, 
heaped about one lonely column, but a 
walk across the stylobate or stone plat- 
form of the temple gives an idea of the 
grand scale of the building, and is inter- 
esting for the sake of the associations of 
the place. 

The Olympieum, or temple of Olym- 
pian Zeus, which flanked the sea-gate on 
the western side, was one of the great- 
est architectural wonders of the world. 
Among all the temples reared by the 
Hellenic race it was inferior in size only 
to the temple of Diana at Ephesus. The 
dimensions of the building were equal to 
those of a large mediaeval cathedral. It 
was referred to by the ancients in terms 
which show that they regarded it as a 



thing little less astonishing than any of 
the world's Seven Wonders. The design 
was peculiar : unlike the other Sicilian 
temples, which were usually surrounded 
by a colonnade, the external walls of the 
Olympieum were adorned only -^ith en- 
gaged columns of enormous size. Dio- 
dorus, in a passage often quoted regard- 
ing the ancient splendor of Acragas, thus 
describes these columns : " Their circum- 
ference in the outer portion is twenty feet, 
so that a man's body can be contained 
in one of the flutes ; and the breadth of 
the part within is twelve feet. The size 
and height of the porticoes are amazing. 
In the part looking toward the east was 
represented the battle of the gods and 
the giants, excellent for size, beauty and 
fine workmanship. In the pediment to- 
ward the west was represented the cap- 
ture of Troy, in which each one of the 
heroes, elaborately sculptured, can be 
known by his own characteristics." 

The interior decorations of this build- 
ing were of a peculiar character. Against 
the four walls it seems that huge pilasters 
rose two-thirds the height of the build- 
ing, and each was surmounted by the 
figure of a giant supporting the roof on 
his uplifted hands. These ranks of co- 
lossal figures were the mpst original and 
perhaps the most impressive feature of 
this temple's architecture. They seem- 
ed to bow beneath the weight imposed 
upon them, and symbolized to the wor- 
shippers of Zeus his conquest of the 
giants, who, as tradition said, reigned 
in Sicily until the power of Zeus became 
supreme. 

I wandered about among the ruins of 
the Olympieum in a state of simmering 
indignation, unable to forgive or forget 
the stupidity of the mediaeval inhabitants 
of Girgenti. They wanted a mole to im- 
prove their bad harbor, and found ma- 
terials for it in this building, though stone 
in abundance may be quarried at half 
the distance from the sea. In conse- 
quence of this devastation the remains 
of the edifice are comparatively scanty, 
though enough is left to afford material 
for more than one temple of moderate 
size. Several acres are strewn with the 
wrought stones, each of Which weighs 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



197 



many tons ; but nothing stands except 
the basenient - walls, which rise above 
the surface of the ground to the level 
of the temple - floor. Even the stone 
flooring is torn up, and the space en- 
closed by the foundations is overgrown 
with wild flowers. 



As we climbed up into the area of the 
temple the one object which seized and 
held our attention was the monstrous 
figure of a giant in stone which lies 
stretched out upon the floor : it is the 
only one which remains of the roof- 
supporting colossi, and indeed the only 




TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX. 



remnant of the wealth of sculpture which 
once adorned the building. Flocks were 
cropping the pasturage of the temple- 
floor, and the figure of their shepherd, 
resting against the statue, set off" by con- 
trast its huge proportions. The length 
of the recumbent form is twenty -six feet : 
it lies with arms upraised, as if the giant 
slept with his clasped hands for a pillow. 
The stone is exceedingly worn by ages 
of exposure, yet the altitude and size of 
the figure are full of grandeur, and it aids 
the imagination more than all the other 
remains in conceiving what must have 
been the original beauty of the edifice. 

In the range of buildings that over- 
looked the city-wall the fifth and last 
goes by the name of the temple of Cas- 
tor and Pollux. A statue of Leda found 



on the spot makes it probable that it was 
built in honor of her, rather than of her 
sons. It is a picturesque ruin, standing 
near the western angle of the wall, close 
to the brink of the precipice, which here 
is high enough to give grandeur to the 
site. Of the thirty -four columns that 
surrounded the peristyle, only a pretty 
group of four remains, surmounted by 
the cornice and one angle of the pedi- 
ment. Though this was one of the 
smallest of the sacred buildings, its posi- 
tion was one of the loveliest of the town. 
A large artificial lake filled the ravine on 
the western side of the city, and washed 
the base of the cliff on which this temple 
stands, so that a picture of the white 
colonnade was reflected from the water 
far below. 



198 



A MOUTH IN SICILY. 



The less important ruins about Gir- 
genti are very numerous. Four days 
were overcrowded with interesting work 
m exploring the other temples, aque- 
ducts and tombs, and in revisiting the 
great ruins. 



The fifth day found us hurried reluct- 
antly away, over a most tempestuous 
sea, toward Syracuse : longer delay was 
impossible, for Girgenti has but weekly 
steam communication with the outer 
world. 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 



CONCLUDING PART. 




THE OLYMPIEUM. 



THE steamer which carried us to- 
ward Syracuse was small, the sea 
was rough, our fellow-travellers were of- 
ficers of the Italian army; therefore, as 
we rounded the south-eastern cape, the 



stormy Pachinum, and a drenching rain 
forced me to leave the deck, the ship's 
cabin presented a doleful spectacle to 
my eyes. "How were the mighty fall- 
en !'" The stalwart officers, to a man. 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



199 



lay pallid and motionless as if some 
conquering foe had cut off the flower 
of the Italian army. On every lounge 
and berth was seen a pale and woe- 
begone face, made the more ghastly 
by the contrast with a beard of intense 
blackness. 

Their hair drooped round their pallid cheeks 
Like sea- weed round a clam. 

The sight strengthened my opinion that 
the dark-haired people of Southern Eu- 
rope are more invariably and more se- 
verely affected by sea-sickness than fair- 
haired men of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

There are few positions which give to 
the human soul such a feeling of calm 
superiority, of deep self-satisfaction, as 
that which is experienced by a man sit- 
ting with a clear head and smiling coun- 
tenance in the midst of a sea -sick com- 
pany. Nevertheless, even the dignity of 
that position became irksome with time, 
and I could sympathize with the sighs 
of relief which burst in chorus from the 
military gentlemen when, sooner than 
seemed possible, the rolling ceased, we 
heard the anchor drop, and knew that 
our voyage was at an end. 

The view which greeted our eyes on 
returning to the deck was of a different 
character from any which we had met be- 
fore in Sicily. The steamer was at anchor 
in the beautiful great harbor of Syracuse. 
The country on the north, south and west 
of the bay is prettily varied by low, rolling 
hills, but would seem tame if compared 
with the rugged scenery of all other parts 
of the island except for one grand fea- 
ture, the superb snow-covered pyramid 
of Etna, which, though forty miles away 
from Syracuse, is the most striking ob- 
ject in sight. 

Across the eastern side of the bay, 
dividing it from the open sea, lies the 
island of Ortygia, covered by the houses 
of Syracuse. The buildings rise from 
the edge of the water, and the symmet- 
rical shape of the island gives a singular 
grace to the city viewed as a whole. 
Seen fron. a distance across the water, 
it is like a great white waterfowl resting 
on the surface of the sea. 

The city was founded twenty -six cen- 
turies ago on Ortygia, but in the course 



of ages it covered many square miles of 
the adjacent coast : now, in its old age, 
it has shrunk again within the narrow 
limits of the island. 

A man who in his school -boy days 
has toiled over the ^neid and the Bu- 
colics, changing the lovely Latin verses 
into bad English prose, and has felt 
even a little appreciation of the poetry, 
cannot rest long in Syracuse without 
looking about him for the famous Are- 
thusa, the sacred fountain whose praises 
are sounded by Virgil, and which was 
the subject of so much poetry and le- 
gend through the classical ages. After 
we had landed upon the quay before the 
sea-gate of the city, and had passed up 
through the gate to one of the adjacent 
hotels overlooking the bay, enough of 
daylight remained to us for a little sight- 
seeing. Our thoughts naturally turned 
first to Arethusa. The fountain is most 
pleasantly approached by going back 
through the sea-gate on to the Marina, 
a beautiful seashore drive which runs 
for half the length of the island between 
the town-wall and the shore of the har- 
bor, and is laid out in imitation of the 
grand Marina of Palermo. 

At the southern end of this avenue 
we descended a stairway of stone to the 
shore of the harbor. The custodian of 
Arethusa threw open an iron gateway 
on our left, and we stepped down to the 
edge of the fountain. A large semicir- 
cular space, which is bounded on its 
curve by a wall of massive masonry and 
faces toward the bay, is quite filled by 
the pool of Arethusa, except that a nar- 
row flagged walk runs by the water's edge. 
The clear water bursts in a torrent from 
many openings in the rock underlying 
the wall, and, rushing across the pool and 
through a short channel, falls into the 
bay with almost the volume of a river. 
The pool is so close to the surface of the 
harbor that if it were by any sea but the 
tideless Mediterranean it would be daily 
overflowed even by a rise of a few inches. 

The fountain is adorned with the pa- 
pyrus brought from the marshes beyond 
the harbor. As we paced the flagging 
along the edge of the water the plumes 
of the papyrus nodded in the wind high 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



over our heads. It seemed the most 
stately and graceful of plants, even in 
the midst of the luxuriant vegetable life 
of Sicily. 

The fable of Arethusa and Alpheus is 



well known : Virgil has expressed it in a 
few words : 

Alpheum fama est hue Elidis amnem 
Occultas egisse vias subter mare ; qui nunc 
Ore, Arethusa, tuo Siculis confunditur undis. 




LATOMIA DEI CAPPUCCINI. 



The story goes that the nymph Are- 
thusa, pursued by the river - god Alphe- 
us in Greece, implored the aid of Diana, 
and was changed by her into a fountain 
which sank into the earth, and, flowing 
together with the waters of the river a 
hundred leagues under the sea, rose to 
the light again in this Ortygian pool. 

The story has this foundation in truth, 
that the waters of Arethusa really flow 



under the sea. The fountain is the last 
outlet of one of the ancient aqueducts, 
which has its origin far away in the hills 
of Sicily, north-west of the city. The 
conduit is carried for several miles un- 
der the plateau occupied by that district 
of Syracuse called Epipolae : thence it 
descends under the small harbor, and 
at last emerges in the island. 

It is a charming excursion for half a 



A MONTH TN SICIL V. 



day to cross the harbor and visit the re- 
mains which lie outside the ancient walls 
upon its western shore. On a morning 
when the harbor lay calm and brilliant 
among its encircling hills, looking like 
a magnified blue flower among green 
leaves, we descended to the quay and 
engaged boatmen for the trip across the 
bay and up the river Anapus. We were 
rowed due west across the harbor to the 
mouth of the little river, but we had hard- 
ly entered the stream when the boatmen 
began to insinuate that the gentlemen 
would find walking more agreeable : the 
dryness of the winter had rendered the 
Anapus too low for comfortable naviga- 
tion. A rough walk through salt marshes 
and over rocky fields brought us in ten 
minutes to the top of the low but com- 
manding knoll on which the scanty 
ruins of the Olympieum stand in per- 
fect solitude. 

This temple was one of the richest, 
oldest and most revered of all Greek 
fanes. The statue of Olympian Jove 
which was adored here was ranked by 
Cicero among three statues of the god 
which he esteemed the most perfect in 
the world. Gelon, returning from the 
spoliation of the Carthaginians at Hi- 
mera, commemorated the greatest vic- 
tory of the Sicilian Greeks by clothing 
this statue in a robe of solid gold ; but 
a century afterward Dionysius the Ty- 
rant appropriated the gold to his own 
use, apologizing for his greed only with 
the grim joke that "gold was too heavy 
a mantle for summer and too cold for 
winter, but wool was well adapted to 
both seasons." 

The site is interesting rather for its old 
celebrity than for existing remains. Only 
two tall Doric columns stand, showing 
by their wide separation the length of 
the building. They have a circumfer- 
ence of about eighteen feet, and yet each 
column was hewn from a single stone. 

Near the Olympieum, at a point where 
the Anapus receives the tributary waters 
of the famous Cyane — ' ' celeberissitna inter 
Sicilias nymphas" — begins a great thicket 
of papyrus bordering the stream on both 
sides. The gigantic reeds, bending under 
the weight of their bushy heads and ris- 



ing in some cases to a height of nearly 
twenty feet, are mirrored from the slug- 
gish stream below. Amid such vegeta- 
tion it is as easy to imagine one's self 
sailing along the head-waters of the Nile 
as on a river of temperate Europe ; for 
I believe there is no country nearer than 
Abyssinia where this famous plant now 
grows. It long ago disappeared from 
Egypt, nor is it found elsewhere in Eu- 
rope than here. It is hard to account 
for its isolated growth in this marsh, but 
probably its introduction into Europe was 
due to the Arab conquerors of Sicily. 

Ancient Syracuse had great beauty, 
both natural and architectural, yet its 
position cannot compare with the moun- 
tainous height of Acragas, conspicuous 
far away over land and sea ; nor had 
it any such natural beauty as the sea- 
washed cliffs of Selinus, serving as ped- 
estals for sublime buildings. Neverthe- 
less, the situation had a peculiar loveli- 
ness. The buildings of the island, the 
oldest portion of the town, rose. Venice- 
like, from the very waves of the sea. The 
four other districts — Acradina, Tyche, 
Epipolee and Neapolis, sometimes call- 
ed distinct cities — occupied a low table- 
land which overlooks from the north the 
two fine harbors of Syracuse, and spread 
to the adjoining plain. 

Fine as was the site of Syracuse, its 
reputation for extraordinary beauty in 
old times rested chiefly on its architec- 
tural grandeur; so that even at a time 
when the greatness of Syracuse had de- 
clined and Rome was in her prime, a 
Roman, addressing Romans, said, "You 
have often heard that Syracuse is the 
largest of Greek cities, and the most 
beautiful of all cities." 

By far the greater portion of the exist- 
ing remains of Syracuse is found in those 
districts which lie north of the harbor. 
Early in the morning we rode through 
the powerful fortress which defends the 
island upon the north, and crossed the 
bridge connecting Ortygia with the Sicil- 
ian shore, to pass a delightful day among 
the ruins. 

All along under the brow of the Syra- 
cusan plateau the rock is deeply pene- 
trated by old quarries called latomie. It 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 




LATOMIA DEL PARADISO, NEAR SYRACUSE. 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 



203 



was from these quarries that ancient 
Syracuse was built, and their size and 
number indicate how great the city was. 
The first of them which is approached 
on the east is called Latomia dei Cap- 
puccini, from its proximity to the Capu- 
chin convent. It is a vast pit sunk in 
the earth between scarped cliffs which 
rise perpendicularly around it to a height 
of eighty or a hundred feet. In the midst 
of it two monstrous masses of stone like 
fortified towers have been left standing. 
The floor of the quarry, many acres in 
extent, is partly covered with a garden 
of oranges and pomegranates, and a wild 
growth of roses and acanthus runs be- 
tween the trees : over the fallen masses 
of rock and from the cliffs above hang 
ivy and wild vines matted into graceful 
curtains which soften the rough aspect 
of the crags. 

Looking from above upon this luxu- 
riant garden, which lies below so peace- 
ful and solitary and silent that the flight 
or chirp of every bird is noticed, it is 
hard to revive in imagination the trag- 
edy of which it was the scene. In this 
quarry, amid unutterable horrors, toiled 
and perished seven thousand Athenians, 
all that remained of the forces sent forth 
from Athens under Nicias and Demos- 
thenes in an armada greater and more 
splendid than any Greek state before had 
equipped. 

A number of the most important re- 
mains of the city lie in a group not far 
from the main northern highway, a mile 
to the west of the Capuchin monastery. 
The first great ruin which we meet is the 
Roman amphitheatre. The dimensions 
of this amphitheatre, as compared with 
the neighboring Greek theatre, indicate 
a great decline in the population of Sy- 
racuse during the earlier ages of the Ro- 
man empire, for it is hardly larger than 
the amphitheatre of Verona. The seats 
are partly excavated from the natural 
rock, but as the hillside slopes rapidly 
toward the south, the lower part of the 
building is constructed of solid masonry. 
A traveller who has studied the great 
amphitheatres of the Peninsula will find 
little of fresh interest in this ; neverthe- 
less, it was to me a half hour full of in- 



terest which I spent in exploring the 
labyrinth of vaulted corridors for en- 
trance and exit, the innumerable stair- 
ways of stone, and the passages and 
gateways through which wild beasts and 
gladiators were introduced upon the are- 
na ; in noticing the curious arrangements 
for supplying the place with water; in 
searching for inscriptions on the marble 
trimmings, which show to what families 
the best sittings in the theatre belonged. 

A Greek historian has mentioned that 
Hieron II., tyrant of Syracuse, built an 
altar a stadium (one-eighth of a mile) in 
length. It has been suggested that its 
incredible dimensions would long ago 
have been found incorrect by those acute 
German critics whose mission it is to set 
the classical authors right in their figures 
and dimensions, except for the trouble- 
some fact that the altar was dug up in 
1 839. We came to this altar next among 
the ruins. It is a vast platform hewn 
from the natural rock, but supplement- 
ed at its southern end with masonry, 
like the amphitheatre. It is approached 
on each side by a flight of three steps. 
There could hardly have been much use 
for this altar except once in the year, 
when the Syracusans offered to Jupiter 
their annual sacrifice of four hundred 
and fifty oxen — a remarkable example 
of the lavish scale on which public af- 
fairs were conducted at Syracuse both 
in peace and war. 

Above this altar the ground rises first 
in a gradual slope, then perpendicularly, 
to the level of the plateau at that part 
occupied by the district called Neapolis. 
In the vertical face of this cliff" are the 
entrances of two latomie worthy of spe- 
cial notice. The first is a cavern ap- 
proached through the vast open quarry 
called Latomia del Paradise. Beside 
its entrance stands a pinnacle of rocks 
crowned with mediaeval ruins. The 
grotto was anciently used as a prison, 
but has no special historic interest : it is 
attractive only for its beauty. The walls 
of rock about the opening, and even for 
some distance within the cave, are half 
concealed under a quivei ing tapestry of 
the maiden-hair fern, which clings to ev- 
ery crevice of the rock. The roof rests 



204 



A MONTH IN SICIL Y. 




A MONTH IN SICIL V. 



205 



upon innumerable piers roughly hewn 
from the natural rock, and between them 
are seen, far back in the twilight of the 
cavern, the forms of men and women 
moving back and forth as if in the state- 
ly figures of a minuet. They are work- 
ing at the very ordinary business of mak- 
ing ropes, but the surroundings make it 
an exceedingly picturesque occupation. 

The second latomia is called the Ear 
of Dionysius — a name not flattering to 
the tyrant, for the shape of the ear is far 
more asinine than human. The acoustic 
properties of .this cave are very remark- 
able. It is one room, as long and high 
as the nave of a large mediaeval church. 
Every sound made near the opening of 
the cavern is echoed from the farther 
end, and astonishingly magnified. The 
noise from a bit of paper crumpled in the 
hand, after running a distance of five 
hundred feet, returns to the ear increased 
in volume ; and the crack of a tiny pis- 
tol is so multiplied that it seems like the 
simultaneous roar of a hundred distant 
cannon. 

The last and the most remarkable in 
this group of remains is the Greek theatre. 
We descended from the quarries under 
the arches of an aqueduct to the high- 
way. A few minutes' walk brought us 
to the theatre. A most impressive first 
sight of the building is obtained by turn- 
ing from the road into a vaulted passage 
on the right, which emerges upon the 
orchestra j ust in front of the stage. On 
three sides the seats in the vast curve of 
the auditorium rise in receding ranges. 
To the eye, confused by emerging from 
the dim light of the vault, they seem like 
the countless ripples from a stone falling 
in calm water. No traces of the stage re- 
main except the foundation of the sceiia 
at the back, and a trough of masonry at 
the front to contain the curtain ; for, 
contrary to the custom of the m.odern 
stage, the curtain rolled down at the 
opening of the play. 

This theatre is one of the largest ever 
built. Among the Greek theatres of 
which traces remain probably only two 
equalled it in seating capacity. The en- 
tire population of the modern city would 
find room on the seats which remain, yet 



many of the upper tiers are gone. The 
theatre used to accommodate twenty-four 
thousand persons : the new Grand Opera- 
house at Paris will seat less than four 
thousand. Standing in the orchestra and 
considering the great distance of the re- 
moter seats, it is easy to understand why 
the ugly and unnatural masks were al- 
ways retained in the Greek plays, for 
without the reinforcement of the voice 
given by the mouthpiece it would have 
been impossible on the higher tiers to 
distinguish the words of the actor. 

The cavia, or excavation, extends from 
the top to the bottom of the hill. Above 
the fifteenth row of seats a broad cor- 
ridor divides the lower seats of the aris- 
tocracy from those above occupied by 
the common people. On the wall of 
the corridor are inscribed, in large Greek 
capitals, the names of Zeus, of Hieron 
the Tyrant, and of Philistis and Nereis, 
queens of Syracuse, giving titles to the 
great divisions of the theatre. 

A visit to this group of remains usually 
completes the sightseeing of a traveller 
to Syracuse, but three miles to the west 
there stands another ruin, the fortress of 
Euryalus, which was to me the most in- 
teresting building of Syracuse, for it is 
the finest existing specimen of the mil- 
itary engineering of the Greeks, or per- 
haps of any other ancient people. 

Ascending one of the long stairways 
of the theatre, and entering the rock- 
hewn street of tombs, the fortress may 
be reached by following the course of 
the old aqueduct westward for a league 
across the table - land occupied by the 
Epipolffi. 

The lines of cliff which bound the pla- 
teau on the north and south converge to 
a sharp angle at the western end of the 
town. At this extreme point of the city 
stood the fortress, powerfully defending 
the western gate in the town-wall. In 
looking at the ruin from its western side 
only the gray bases of four stone towers 
are seen. All that remains of the fortress 
above ground is in a state of extreme 
ruin, but below the surface of the ground 
the immense fosses, the magazines hewn 
in the rock, and especially the labyrinth 
of subterranean passages running in all 



2o6 



A MONTH IN SICILY. 




A MONTH IN SICILY. 



207 



directions from the fort, are of the high- 
est interest, as throwing hght on ancient 
modes of warfare. From these under- 
ground corridors many stairways of 
stone ascend to concealed openings in 
the country about. They were to be 
used for surprising the enemy by salUes 
from the fortress at unexpected points. 
There is good reason to beheve that we 
see in Euryalus the work of Archimedes, 
or at least that the fortification, if older, 
was greatly improved by him. 

Syracuse is connected with the other 
cities of the eastern coast by the only 
completed railroad in Sicily : for that 
reason this part of the island is becom- 
ing more familiarly known to foreigners 
than other regions, and I need not dwell 
upon the charms of a country so often 
described by others. The remaining 
towns of special interest are Catania, 
Taormina and Messina. 

At Catania we paused long enough 
for a vain attempt to scale the almost 
impenetrable winter-snows of Etna. At 
a height of six thousand feet a wind was 
encountered against which neither man 
nor beast could stand, and the attempt 
was abandoned. 

I cannot here describe at length the 
extraordinary grandeur of the view from 
the ruined Greek theatre of Taormina ; 
but after a year of European travel, 
when a gentleman acknowledged as a 
judge in sesthetic matters said to me 
among the Alps, " There is no other 
view in Europe so beautiful as that 
from the theatre of Taormina," I could 
respond with an unhesitating amen. 

After a few days spent in Messina we 
bade good-bye to Sicily. Messina is a 
handsome, busy, commercial place, well 
built and surrounded by wild mountain- 
scenery. Its cathedral is one of the 
finest churches of Sicily, but, consider- 
ing the ancient importance of the place, 
it is remarkable how few remains of an- 
tiquity are to be found. 

On a brilliant afternoon, when long 
shadows from the Sicilian mountains 
were already beginning to fall across 
the sea, we took the returning steamer 
for Naples, and sailed northward slow- 



ly against the powerful current which 
sweeps between Scylla and Charybdis. 
A month before we had been charmed 
with the scenery on first approaching 
the island, but now, as it faded from 
our eyes, the impression which remain- 
ed upon the mind was of a view more 
beautiful. 

The Strait of Messina is here no wider 
than a broad river. On either side the 
Italian and Sicilian mountains rise so 
near at hand that the waters of the strait 
seem to wash their bases. Out of the viv- 
id blue of the sea they tower up through 
zones of soft green vegetation, lifting to a 
height of many thousand feet bare shoul- 
ders of rock, while here and there the 
highest mountain -Jieads are snow-cap- 
ped, glittering against a blue so deep 
and so undimmed by any cloud or haze 
that the reflected light from the sum- 
mits is almost too dazzling for the eye 
to bear. 

I believe that there cannot be found 
elsewhere, even on the Mediterranean, 
a more sublime harmony of sea and 
mountain -scenery than these views on 
the Strait of Messina, whether looked at 
from the water or the adjacent heights. 
It is a kind of beauty especially fresh 
and charming to American eyes, from 
the fact that along our Atlantic coast the 
mountain -ranges nowhere approach the 
sea. 

A little white town nestling under the 
mountains on the Italian shore still bears 
the name of Scylla. After the steamer 
passed it we were beyond the strongest 
current, and progress was more rapid. 
In less than two hours the Sicilian moun- 
tains were growing very dim in the south, 
and on our left the volcanoes of the Lipa- 
ri Islands were outlined in black against 
the yellow of the western sky. The sun 
set into the smoke-cloud from Vulcano, 
and in the deepening twilight we watch- 
ed the rugged mass of Stromboli rising 
higher out of the sea, but with many 
lingering backward looks at the island 
whose matchless beauty had in a jour- 
ney of one month kindled a sort of loy- 
al attachment akin to a feeling of patriot- 
ism. Alfred T. Bacon. 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



PART I. 




■'^jSi^^Mv.!^: 



w%^l^^}^d: "Si^l^f : 




GOTEKORG. 



THERE is hardly any spectacle in 
the European world more animated 
than the field of glorious water that runs 
like a vein of green malachite between 
Copenhagen and the Swedish coast. It 
is filled with innumerable sea-craft of 
every description, going and coming, 
tacking and tugging, in every direction, 
while the water so beautifully ripples and 
rolls and covers itself with an infinite 
water-lily of foam that the artist's eye is 
delighted and the poet's imagination fe- 
vered with the spangled and tumultuous 
motion. The strait is like a mighty trum- 
pet through which immeasurable wind 
blows — a huge pneumatic tube drawing 
in draughts from the Atlantic and pour- 
ing them up the Baltic, sometimes with 
resistless force. There is continual agi- 
tation in the Cattegat and Skager-Rack, 
The water seems to take on a human 
208 



joyousness, and leaps and laughs with 
living light. It is exquisitely sensitive 
water to impinging sunlight or to wan 
and wasting cloud. It is sometimes so 
black in gloomy weather that the ships 
that sail on it seem sailing on a thun- 
derstorm ; but in a moment a marvel- 
lous transformation takes place, and the 
thunderstorm is smiled away into the 
loveliest sunlight. I have noticed the 
same volatilization of thunderstorms — 
so to speak — in Scotland, where a few 
rays of shattering sunlight will scattei" 
themselves like luminous quicklime over 
half an horizon of cloud, and eat it almost 
instantaneously away. 

Although the Sound is thus replete 
with sea -vessels of every sort traffick- 
ing and travelling to the ends of the 
world, the Danes, like the English in 
their Channel navigation, have no pas- 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



209 



senger- ships of any great size to take 
tourists across to the Swedish coast. 
Many of such passenger -boats as they 
have are mere coasting steamers, small, 
dirty, uncomfortable, seesawing like a 
political newspaper first to one side and 




TYSKA KYRKAN, GOTEBORG 



then to the other — a sort of oscillating 
dungeon rocking you into unutterable 
nausea. The results of such oscilla- 
tions are not to be described. The 
weak, weary and tremulous pilgrim is 
only too glad to catch sight of huge 
looming shores that in the lens of the 
evening light look strangely spectral. 
Our plan was to cross to the south-west 
14 



of Sweden and land at Goteborg, go 
from there by rail to Stockholm, and 
then return — arterial blood-like — through 
the heart of Sweden, visiting the lakes and 
making pilgrimages along the canals to 
various places of interest. As we steam- 
ed on in the dim 
dilating evening 
light we could 
catch glimpses of 
the mountains 
veiled in tremu- 
lous gauzes of mist 
that occasionally 
melted into weak 
rain, and then 
opened and re- 
vealed the most 
beautifully vivid 
green. Some 
time in the night 
we dropped in at 
some remote port 
on a fjord, an- 
chored for a few 
moments in a 
sluggish canal, 
and then put to 
sea again in our 
steam-churn. The 
same evening we 
ran into a delight- 
ful breezy little 
Swedish watering- 
place and took on 
a Swedish bridal- 
party. They had 
a band of musi- 
c i a n s , and the 
tremulous sweet- 
ness of the soft 
and pathetic mu- 
sic has remained 
with me as a sou- 
venir of the trip. 
There is something peculiarly sad, joy- 
ous and strange in this Swedish music. 
Perhaps there are reminiscences of the 
vikings and the old heroic life and the 
vanished sagas, mingled with a throb 
or two of that passionate pagan clinging 
of theirs, that come to melodious resur- 
rection in these bright harmonic sound- 
pictures, and touch the listener with 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



mirth and mournfulness. If, however, 
I remember aright, our oscillating dun- 
geon soon proved fatal to the newly- 
initiated pair, and sounds not of "revel- 
ry by night" came from their state-room. 



What an ogre is the sea, that turns the 
honeymoon into a moon of gall, and 
blows all the sweet breath out of life ! 
As we steamed up the Cattegat we 
caught sight of seals lying among the 




NORRA HAMNGATAN, GOTEBORG. 



rocks, but on our approach they dis- 
appeared. Early in the morning we ran 
up a long gray tongue of fog -hidden 
water, and braced ourselves to the Gote- 
borg dock while the rain and the sea- 
spray scattered plentifully in our faces. 
It is not a particularly delectable sight 
to see a new and strange land for the 
first time through a mist. Not even a 
London fog can idealize away all the 
immense oppression that a stranger feels 
on slipping like a drop into the sea of 
unimagined existence that awaits him. 
Had my first glimpse of Sweden been 
a sunlit glimpse — as it was afterward 
when I visited Goteborg again — how 
different would have been the first im- 
pressions ! As it was, we saw people 
groping about in a sort of mud twilight, 
waterproofed and umbrella-ed from head 
to foot, dripping in the chill air of Arctic 
summer and submerged in the oozy in- 
undation of the mist. It seemed to us 
like a lacustrine, amphibious world, with 



seal - like men and women energetically 
moving about on what looked like land, 
but proved on nearer acquaintance to 
be unfathomable mud. To increase our 
perplexities, we could not find a hotel, or 
the hotel that we did find — with its sad 
little rows of Siberian firs firmly planted 
in green boxes set in rows in front like 
a sort of make - believe forest — was full. 
We were told we might dine there if we 
pleased, but we didn't please, and had 
to trot off to some outlandish part of 
the town in search of other lodgings. 
And here began a series of grimaces, 
gesticulations, broken Swedish, wild de- 
spair, unutterable misunderstandings, but 
final triumph. They stared and we stared, 
and then we were carried up flights of 
stone stairs and along brick-paved pas- 
sages into a room like a parish prison. 
There was no water, no towel, no basin ; 
and as for the bed, I think it was still 
warm with somebody that had just left 
it. We looked through dingy windows 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



into a stable-yard, but did not dare lift 
the windows. We could not get a drop 
of coffee or anything else in the house. 
Strange men and stranger women came 
mincing and mouthing in, admiring our 
outlandish ways and perhaps taking us 
for a brace of convicts. I felt forlorn. 
A feeling of utter disappointment crept 
through my numbed senses. Outside it 
was hideous — inside it was diabolical. I 




GUSTAF ADOLF S STATUE, GOTEBORG. 

summoned all I had of Swedish up from 
the vasty deep, but I found they had no 
more idea of what I was saying than if I 
had been a Samojede. We were grate- 
ful, however, that they did not drive us 
out of the house into the street. After a 
while, when we had parted with certain 
reminiscences of the steamer, we sallied 
forth to see what was to be seen, or rather 
to eat what was to be eaten, for a mighty 
hunger had come upon us meantime since 
we had stormed the Swedish citadel and 
found it swept and garnished. 

All Goteborg, I found — or all the un- 
claimed, un-familied, old-bachelor part — 



led a sort of Bohemian life, and while they 
slept at what they called "home," seem- 
ed to breakfast, dine, and sup at the va- 
rious restaurants. This seems to be a 
peculiarity of Swedish life. What the 
women live on I cannot imagine. The 
restaurants are of every class and fashion. 
Our eyes opened at the enormous eating 
and drinking. The Eskimo are said to 
consume daily two gallons of blubber 
and to have a pelvic capacity equal to 
forty pounds of veal at one meal. The 
Swedes almost startled us into believing 
this ; or were we bewitched ? When we 
were at dessert our companions would still 
be wrestling with soup. No nation grap- 
ples with dinner like the Swedish. The 
delicate birdlike appetite of an Italian, 
satisfied as he is with a string of mac- 
aroni and a glass of sunlight, must be 
absolutely phenomenal to these people. 
Pounds of food seemed to disappear undei 
their magical mastication — food, too, well 
mellowed with wine. The Swedes are 
famous drinkers, and one of the na- 
tional traits is an abounding conviviality. 
From this perhaps it comes that they are 
a somewhat loose people. 

I found Goteborg extremely modern 
and extremely commercial, but I was 
surprised when the mist lifted to find 
what an environment of charming sce- 
nery it is set in. It is only a place of 
sixty thousand inhabitants, but it is in 
some respects superior to Stockholm. It 
is very rich in manufactures of all kinds. 
The town lies in a luxuriant valley be- 
tween bare rocks that lift themselves in 
fantastic ruggedness about its outskirts. 
It is a place of ancient memories, with a 
history — burnt, besieged and rebuilt as 
the town has been several times — ex- 
tending into a misty antiquity. The place 
is not healthy, in spite of the beauty of 
its situation. Charles IX. in 1607 con- 
structed the new city of Goteborg after 
the model of the Dutch cities, and peo- 
pled it with strangers. There are numer- 
ous canals bordered by trees and palatial 
residences. Looking down the Sodra 
Hamngatan, which is the finest street 
in the city, there is a striking perspec- 
tive toward the east. The canal with 
its migratory population of boats lies be- 



212 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



fore you, with the broad street bordered 
on both sides by a fringe of palaces; then 
the bridges, the quays and the avenues ; 
on the right the Great 
Square (called nearly 
always target, or market- 
place), with the elegant 
bourse, the residence of 
the commandant, and the -J 

German church (Tyska ^ 

Kyrkan), where the great 
Rutger von Ascheberg 
reposes. In the distance 
is the Gote-Elf (River 
Elbe). There are many 
bright and busy streets, 
prominent among which 
is the Norra Hamngatan 
with its canal, quays and 
handsome houses. Fo- 
gelberg's great bronze 
statue of Gustaf Adolf, 
erected in 1854, adorns 
the principal square. 
The graceful Engelska 
Kyrkan (English 
church), constructed un- 
der the superintendence 
of Major Edelsvard, is 
a pretty object in the Goteborg land- 
scape. 

There are lovely gardens in the sub- 
urbs, and the same long delightful roads 
and lanes bordered by limes and elms that 
I had noticed in Denmark. The Swedes 
are a simple - hearted, laughter - loving 
people, and they make as much as pos- 
sible of their short summer. The town 
abounds in commercial enterprises of ev- 
ery sort, full of ships, canals and factories 
— a busy, unpoetic life, relieved on Sun- 
days by theatres and operas, to which 
everybody goes as a matter of course. 
I remember a delightful evening passed 
in one of the pleasant gardens, while a 
band played soothingly and the long 
light fell out over luxuriant green shrub- 
beries and bewildering flowers — a garden 
full of happy people, full of a sort of old 
Greek Anacreontic spirit, sweet and sun- 
ny as any picnic party in Italy. It is in 
these brilliant bits of summer that the 
Swedes lay up stores of sunshine for 
the long and relentless winter — a winter 



which is a sort of hyperborean twilight 
illumined by the dazzling shadow-dance 
of the aurora borealis. 




ENGELSKA KYRKAN, GOTEBORO. 

The Swedes are constitutionally sun- 
ny-tempered. There is lurking in their 
constitution that drop of golden light 
which transforms a dew-drop into a lens 
— a highly imaginative, sociable, sensu- 
ous people, supplementing their bleak 
climate by every resource of art and 
culture. Swedish poetry abounds in rich 
pictorial ei?'ects, and yet it has the sil- 
very spirituality of the most unsensuous 
German ballad. We may look almost 
in vain through the Greek and Latin 
poets for any recognition of the superb 
Mediterranean landscapes that must con- 
tinually have impinged on their physical 
consciousness, and yet did not result in 
the multiplicity of imagery and image- 
making that we are rainbowed with in the 
modern school of poets. Their words do 
not give off that oblique iridescence which 
is as much a matter of the spirit as any 
other occult delight, but which the hard 
texture of their words and thoughts is 
unfamiliar with. In Theocritus there are 
delicious hints and buds of landscape 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



painting always about to blossom into 
pictures — a warm, sensuous, silken gla- 
mour of sea and sky — an occasional but 
entirely incidental intrusion of the mag- 
ical Sicilian scenery by which his life 
was enatmosphered. But there is none 
of the elaborate consciousness of the 
manifold brightness and beauty of the 
outside world that we gather from any 
poet of the nineteenth century. 

Swedish literature is penetrated with 
this love of scenery. It is the same with 
the Norwegian writer Bjornson and the 
Norwegian writers in general. We see 
the same feeling morbidly intensified 
when Danes or Swedes journey from 



their own pale climate to the lands of 
the South — Hans Andersen, for exam- 
ple, who in his Improvisatore shows that 
he was so bewitched by Italy, and throws 
off his impressions in pages of impas- 
sioned description. The hnprovisatore, 
in fact, is a divine Dionysiac sort of book, 
full of spiritual brilliance and frenzy, full 
of the supreme effervescence of deified 
youth. Montaigne said that the simple 
gazing on a healthy person communi- 
cates health. So it seems to me the 
mere opening of their eyes on Italy en- 
dows Swedes and Danes with rare im- 
agination. 

The part of Sweden in which Goteborg 




ON THE GOTEBORG AND STOCKHOLM RAILROAD. 



lies is full of grain and green fields, and 
a cultjre so soft and luxurious that it re- 
minds one of parts of France. The coun- 
try is mountainous, but everywhere up 
the mountains there run curving valleys 
full of rye and wheat that leave behind 
their lines of sinuous and suggestive 
green. There are a South and a North 
to Sweden as different as the South and 
the North with us. The Lapps and Finns 
in the extreme North dream of this, to 
them, delicious Arcadia of the South of 
Sweden as of something fairylike and 
unattainable. In the North life is so 
hard, so bitter, so hopeless : it is a life 



shared with wolves, bears and reindeer 
— a life that reduces people to live or 
the ground bark of trees, grovel in huts 
two-thirds of the year, and become stunt- 
ed, abject and miserable. For centuries 
— and centuries strangely near cars — 
these northern provinces were strong- 
holds of paganism. The vivid hered- 
itary prejudices of the Finns and Lapps 
crop out in sharp controversies with the 
Swedes and Norwegians. A Swedish or 
Norwegian woman who marries one of 
these people has to learn his language, 
there being sounds in the Scandinavian, 
simple as these sounds are, unpronounce- 



214 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 








SODERTELGE. 



able to the mountaineers. They possess 
a plaintive ballad literature and a lan- 
guage that has fifteen cases. Our words 
fiend and fiendish are said to be con- 
nected with Mnn and Finnish — a desig- 
nation derived from the homeliness of 
the nation. Their swart skins, blue-black 
eyes and squat figures make a tout en- 
semble that richly justifies the etymology.' 
It is said to be difficult to get into their 
confidence, so suspicious and sinister are 
they in many cases — a race upon whom 
the radiations of Christianity have play- 
ed but faintly. Their country is a coun- 
try of vast voluminous mountains, fro- 
zen and inaccessible except to them — 
a strange scene of elemental glory and 
grimness, where the most vivid mag- 
netic storms light up the horizon and 
startle even the drowsy Lapp with their 
ghostly magnificence. These displays 
of electric phenomena resemble a huge 
seolian harp turned into light, so infin- 
itely still and fitful are they as they flash 
out into sudden seas of light. 

The Swedes are blissfully unconscious 
of American luxuriousness in railway 



travelling. They at least seem to remem- 
ber that travel and travail are one and 
the same word. I remember with fever- 
ish vividness the night we spent in going 
from Goteborg to Stockholm — the strange 
cries, the frequent stoppings, the uniform- 
ed conductor with a tiny oil-lamp fixed 
on his breast like a boutonniere, the dim 
lines of vanishing mountains, the fan- 
tastic - looking people and villages we 
passed, the melodious accents of the 
Swedish 'tongue with its intonations vo- 
luptuous almost as the Tuscan, the swift, 
silent rivers the train sped over, and the 
great number of lakes we passed, — all 
blending as in the febrile phantasmagory 
of an opium-dream. It was a bouquet of 
confused impressions. When we mean- 
dered out into daylight, after a while we 
saw a country almost perfectly bald of 
trees — a peculiarity which Sweden shares 
with Italy — thinly populated, with vast 
stretches of weary, watery horizon and 
a scantiness of evidences of life that sur- 
prised me. The houses were principally 
one - storied, thatched and low : there 
seemed to be few or no fences — which 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



215 



is the case also in Germany — and the 
culture was rude and primitive. The 
Italian peasant still drags about the 
plough we read of in the Georgics of 
Virgil, and combs the ground with his 



superficial harrow precisely as when he 
sunned himself in the aurea regna of 
Augustus. So the Swedish peasant, mix- 
ing his meal with ground beech-bark and 
eating five or six times a dav, clings to 




the barbarous implements of the Vasas 
as he does to their memories, and finds 
it hard to give up the ancestral mode of 
agriculture. The wonderful advances the 
Swedes have recently made in civiliza- 



tion were amply illustrated last year at 
Philadelphia. We have all heard of their 
astonishing success in mining, their vast 
iron- and copper-mines, their silver and 
lumber, their model school -houses and 



2l6 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



their pauperism. A specialist would no 
doubt find much in their foundries and 
manufactories that would show the ut- 
most scientific spirit. The biting air has 
kindled science in them, and forced it to 
a thousand ingenious 
applications. But in 
travelling over the face 
of the country ' there is 
an apparent and op- 
pressive absence of all 
this. The interior of 
Sweden looks like a 
country just harvested. 
Great richness, except 
mineral richness, is not 
in the soil, and cannot 
be brought out of it ex- 
cept by the most thor- 
ough fertilization. 

The lakes are im- 
mense : one of them is J 
ninety, another fifty, ^ 
miles in length. Yet c 
Switzerland can throw 5 
more beauty into a few ^ 
furlongs of magical i 
water than we find in \ 
all these desolate miles. "^ 
The water is that shal- \ 
low, sandy -haired sort \ 
without depth enough \ 
to make it luminously -• 
blue, and with that in- 
terminable gray in hor- 
izon and sky that fa- 
tigues the eye. I was 
disappointed in the 
great lakes of Sweden. 
In the far North there 
are bits of exquisite 
water full of eerie and 
savage beauty — moun- 
tain-locked Undines 
that have gathered their 
shining spiritualities 
under the curves of 
enormous cliffs, and are 
hidden away from the 
blowing; sunlight. There is laughter of 
fern and gleam of sea-bird about them, 
while the wild shock of the rain impinges 
on the. septentrional sunlight and suffuses 
the heavens with orange mist. These 



atoms of beauty tucked away among the 
fjelds and fjords are remote from sum- 
mer pilgrims, unless like true knights 
they brave the heroic mountains and 
snatch them from their isolation. As 




we journeyed on to Stockholm, one after 
another of the larger lakes came in sight, 
as gray and gaunt as a Scottish moor, 
and not even with that silver side- 
look that most water has when seer* 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



217 



aslant. There appeared to be few water- 
fowl, though in the mountain - lakes of 
the North they are countless — just a flat, 
dull prairie of water. How the Swedes 
can be so poetic with all this load of 
fog - producing water is a psychological 
problem. Of course the exhalations from 
these waters are full of malaria. They 
haul up an endless fog, and spread it 



thick as butter over the whole land. To 
have one's life thus overlaid with fog 
would certainly create discontent with us. 
A constitutional monarchy like the 
Swedish, however, can exist as well in 
fog as in sunshine — perhaps better. 
There are no nervous revolutionary 
tendencies, no spasms of sudden self- 
consciousness, no flaming and fulminat- 




ing. The Swedes quietly convoke their 
Diet, or their "Big Thing" [Siorthing), 
as they call it — the other provincial ones 
suggesting by contrast the title "Little 
Things" — in the winter of every year, 
and dream of no revolution except to 
keep down gynocracy. Their expe- 
rience of Queen Christina appears to 
have made a profound impression, for 
by their new constitution of 1807 they 
relentlessly established the Salic law. 
The succession is hereditary, though 
they can elect a foreigner in case of 
extinction of the reigning race. The 
king is put under solemn oath to be 
a Lutheran ; which Church no sooner 
found itself enjoying pre-eminence than 
it began to persecute, turning Catholics 
out of doors, elevating its own arch- 
bishop into a sort of pope, excluding 
Protestant dissenters from many im- 
portant offices, and going about with 



bell, book and candle to fumigate (so 
to speak) other pestiferous churches. 
For centuries the bishops have been 
true spiritual sovereigns, genuine te- 
trarchs mayhap, not at all averse, when 
circumstances permitted, to order a mur- 
der of the innocents. The Catholics were 
emancipated five years ago — a little later 
than our slaves — and may now be elect- 
ed if anybody would vote for them. The 
Jews are, I think, still knocking at the 
social and political door. Since Norway 
and Sweden were united in 18 14 the 
Norwegians have rid themselves of a 
titled class, and their constitution is now 
the most republican in Europe. The 
king made a vain attempt to inflict a 
noble order on the people when their 
own nobility became extinct ; but this 
stalwart people in a fit of splenetic ex- 
altation rebelled, and there is now not 
a sprig of titled pedigree in the land. 



2l8 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



When the king goes to visit his Norwe- 
gian subjects he is often received and 
entertained by the grand peasants who 
date their Hneage from the vikings and 
receive their king on terms of equahty. 
It is a beautiful patriarchal relation — a 
relation full of the hoariness and the 
homeliness of antique times, full also 
of a grand but unconscious recognition 
of human dignity. It is a fine illustra- 
tion, too, of the etymology of the word 
king — z. e. "one who is the kinsman of 
all his people." 

In Sweden education is compulsory 
from the age of nine, and in case of 
persistent neglect the children are taken 
from their parents and sent to boarding- 
schools, while the parents are made to 
pay their board. The Swedish govern- 
ment is determined — and very properly 
determined — to extinguish ignorance. It 
has established a complete hierarchy of 
schools, at all of which tuition is free, 
from the lowest elementary schools up 
to the two great universities of Upsala 
and Lund. The school-houses are quite 
famous for neatness and completeness. 
It has been hard, however, to keep down 
a certain French flippancy that has per- 
vaded and perverted the literature for 
more than a hundred years. The mod- 
ern Swedish literature, indeed, may al- 
most be said to have quickened and 
germinated from the French, just as 
the great school of modern Germans 
received in the eighteenth century its 
chief stimulus from Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton and Goldsmith. Every Swede has a 
crumb or two of French which he is par- 
ticularly proud of, but through this veneer- 
ing looms the wild, fresh Scandinavian 
imagination, as sharply individualized as 
the infinite breath of their heather-bloom. 

The bills one gets at the Swedish ho- 
tels are truly polyglot, as much French 
and English and as little Swedish as 
possible. One always has an uneasy 
feeling that one is being cheated, and 
cheated, too, in two or three different 
languages in one and the same bill. It 
is really necessary to carry a variety of 
small pocket dictionaries to work one's 
way successfully through a Swedish bill 
of fare. On the right hand there is al- 



ways a formidable array of what look 
like dollars and cents, but this is always 
ingeniously couched in Swedish, in or- 
der perhaps that the foreigner may un- 
derstand as little of it as possible. Al- 
though when you arrive you may look 




KARL XII. 'S BILDSTOD. 

like a millionaire, you are, unless you 
make voluminous objections, relentless- 
ly consigned to a garret up five flights 
of stairs, the servant comforting you on 
the way up by describing the charming 
view. The view from the Kung Carl, 
after we had passed the pretty station 
of Sbdertelge on the lake and arrived 
at Stockholm, was charming. Europe 
from an attic is not at first blush so al- 
luring, but when the preliminary indig- 
nation and humiliation at being taken 
up so high have evaporated, then comes 
in the most enjoyable part of the trip — 
inspection of the quaint furniture, read- 
ing the quaint regulations, linguistic com- 
bats with the unintelligible waiter, and 
gazing down into the delightful streets. 
Stockholm lacks the magnificent sun- 
ny sweep of the Bay of Naples : it lacks, 
too, the voluptuous light of Italy that so 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



219 



wonderfully gilds and soothes an Italian 
landscape into a scene of silken beauty. 
But with the exception of Naples and 
Edinburgh it is the most nobly-situated 
capital of Europe. The Malar Lake, on 
whose pregnant emerald slopes it lies — 
or rather in and about which Stockholm 
runs like an incrustation of rare repousse- 
work — is, on a limited scale, a miniature 
St. Lawrence, full of islands, turreted and 
twisted into a thousand insular eccen- 



tricities, fantastic with foam and firs, cov- 
ered with the richest umbrage, bright 
with castles and chateaux, and made 
alive by a singularly vivacious popula- 
tion. Stockholm itself is a string of isl- 
ands linked together by bridges. The 
crowning architectural feature of the 
town is the Slottet, or royal residence, 
built upon a lofty islet and commanding 
the whole scene with its massive square 
walls. A beautiful causeway, the Norr- 




^^3^.s^3-V^ 



THE RIDDARHOLMS liRlDGE, STUCKIIULM. 



bro, lined by low shops and leading down 
by a stairway to the famous Strbmpar- 
terre, connects it with the great square 
and royal theatre. It is one of the finest 
sights imaginable to stand on this cause- 
way and watch the tide of people drift- 
ing over, the thronging ships and steam- 
ers in the winding lake beneath, and the 
brilliant and buoyant life all around. 

The royal castle is a many-sided mon- 
ster : a vast library, a museum, splendid 
state apartments and a sumptuous hall 
are contained within its huge quadrangle. 
European palaces are not prepossessing 
in general : they look like immense jails 
— penitentiaries for princes — with no end 
of cobwebbed window-glass, and habit- 
able only here and there in certain suites 
of rooms, like oases in a desert. The 
quays around and beneath the Slottet 
are lined with Russian, Danish, Dutch 
and English ships. Statues of Gustavus 
Adolphus, Gustavus Vasa and Charles 
XII. — a remarkable one of the latter by 



Molin, surrounded by four mortars cap- 
tured in his wars, stands in the Place 
Charles XII. — are as numerous as the 
bronze dukes of Wellington in London, 
prancing to battle in eveiy square and 
charging unimaginable enemies on bra- 
zen steeds. This apotheosis of brass is 
really becoming intolerable. One can 
hardly take a step in continental towns 
but heroes and martyrs are grimacing 
and pirouetting from pyramids of granite. 
The statue of Charles XII., though strik- 
ing enough in itself, is on a singularly low 
pedestal. A fine fountain, also by Molin, 
and a statue of Charles XIII. adorn the 
same sunny and sylvan square. A lit- 
tle alley leads to the square commemo- 
rative of the great chemist Berzelius. 

The beauty of Stockholm is its blend- 
ing of rushing melodic water, towering 
islands and rich umbrageous suburbs. 
Its island-clusters are girded by a per- 
petual sinuous sunlight of changeful 
water. 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



CONCLUDING PART. 




HASSELBACKEN. 



THERE are delicious gardens all 
about Stockholm — gardens full of 
summer and summer theatres and Ar- 
cadian walks everywhere bordering on 
bright rushing water and filled with 
mighty beech trees and Norwegian firs. 
One of the most famous of these resorts 
is Hasselbacken, a bit of the celebrated 
Djurgarden, which commands an un- 
rivalled view of panoramic Stockholm. 
Near by is the magnificent old oak call- 
ed Bellman's Oak, from Bellman, the 
national Swedish poet, who used to sit 
here in the gray hours of the last cen- 
tury and play his inimitable guitar. 
220 



There is a statue of him in the grounds 
of the DjurgS.rden, and the whole place 
is garrulous with his bacchic spirit. The 
air is gay with music. Omnibuses and 
vapeurs-omnibus carry you everywhere 
for a mere trifle. There is a hectic flush 
in the summer of Sweden. The flowers 
are feverishly bright, and one may well 
believe there is no lack of them in the 
land of Linnseus. 

The DjurgSrd which I have mentioned 
is a town of restaurants, concert-houses, 
puppet-plays and pavilions, full all the 
summer long of pedestrians and prom- 
enaders. After the long chrysalis slum- 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



ber of winter the Swedes emerge bril- 
liant as butterflies, smitten with a sort 
of fury of pleasure brief and vivid as a 
flower whose whole autobiography is its 
perfume. This yearning for color, pas- 
sion and pleasure is what strikes the 
traveller particularly in them. It may 




bellman's oak at hasselbacken. 



be turned into the Attis-like spiritual in- 
ebriation of Swedenborg, whose catalep- 
sy, like Mohammed's, has become a re- 
ligion ; or into the purely scientific pas- 
sion of Berzelius; or into the exquisite 
outlining of Tegner's poetry — a poetry 
pale and pregnant and perfect as the 
silver thread of the new moon. It is al- 
ways distinctly and recognizably there. 
I felt it as I walked through the ancient 



house in Upsala where the great Lin- 
naeus had dwelt thirty-five years delv- 
ing among the herbs and flowers, and 
receiving the paltry title of knight of the 
Polar Star in recognition of his System 
of Nature. The same enthusiasm leaps 
up into flamelike exaltation in the won- 
derful achievements 
of the Swedish gen- 
erals. 

I have never seen 
a place that had so 
many striking situ- 
ations for churches 
and public buildings 
as Stockholm, while 
the island altitudes 
and isolated heights, 
the perpetual shim- 
mer of sunny water 
everywhere, the long 
railway bridges leap- 
ing the Malar, and 
the incessant steam- 
ing to and fro of 
miniature propellers 
conveying passen- 
gers from one part 
of the town and from 
one island to anoth- 
er, give motion and 
variety to every 
view. The streets 
are narrow, and fre- 
quently interrupted 
by windings of the 
Malar Lake. Much 
of the architecture 
has a Cinque-cento 
look. There is no 
lack of handsome 
modern buildings, 
however, such as the 
Technological Insti- 
tute and Blanch's cafe, where the Stock- 
holmers go for the excellent after-dinner 
music. There is an air of the Middle 
Ages in the famous Riddarholmskyrkan 
(the Westminster Abbey of Sweden), the 
Svea Hofrattet and the strange - looking 
inns and wharves. Charles Lamb would 
have been delighted with their rubbish, 
their antiquities, their embalmed memo- 
rials of a great past and their odd incon- 



222 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



gruities of the present. We could feel 
that we were in the land of Jenny Lind 
and Christine Nilsson, for the August air 
seemed full of nightingales, and 
there was a suavity and a sweet- 
ness in the manners of the people 
that sprang from an unseen depth 
of rhythmic sensibilities. 

There float about in my mem- 
ory many pleasant days spent in 
rambling about the old town ; 
gazing in at the bookstalls and 
print-shop windows; wondering 
at the marvellously artistic way in 
which the butchers dress up their 
meats ; strolling into dim seven- 
teenth-century churches ; stopping 
at old-fashioned inns to get a cup 
of coffee, and peeping and poking 
about after the fashion of a weasel. 
The fine new National Museum, 
with its elegant vestibule and rich 
treasures, came in for its share of 
attention, andaglamour of delight- 
ful pictures, statuary and engrav- 
ings hovers before my mind's eye 
still. I have never seen a more 
beautifully arranged museum, a 
museum more full of cheerfulness 
and luminousness, with the bright 
sun streaming in on the antique armor 
and kindling all the relics of the dusky 



past into vivid and silent life. The por- 
tico is of green Swedish marble, with or- 
naments in bas-rehef, statues of Tessin 



..i^^ 




BELLMAN S STATUE. 



and Sergei and busts of Fogelberg, Ehr- 
enstahl, Linnaeus, Tegner, Berzelius and 




TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



Wallin. There are elegant columns of 
Italian marble in the great vestibule and 
salles within. The cost of the structure 



was two million two hundred thousand 
rixdalers. Collections of engravings and 
original drawings, majolica and antique 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



223 



vases, galleries of sculpture ancient and 
modern, collections of models and plaster 
casts, galleries of paintings and historical 
costumes, colossal statues of Odin, Thor 
and Balder, valuable antiquities from the 



Stone, Iron and Bronze Ages, mediaeval 
objects of art, coins, armor, ^re some of 
the things gathered into this fine build- 
ing. There are some beautiful modern 
sculptures, chiefly of the Swedish school 




—among them the Wrestlers of Mohn. 
There are also many vivid glimpses of 
old Swedish life and legend dramatically 
thrown on canvas. The Swedish school 
seems particularly rich in landscapes, 



most of which are a rich reflex of that 
Southern tropic life that has built its nest 
among the lilies of Florence or found its 
types in the bazaars of Constantinople. 
There are also many scientific and tech 



224 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



nological schools. The old theatre where 
Jenny Lind made her first appearance 
stands in the great Gustave Adolphe 
Place, opposite the crown-prince's resi- 
dence, with the 
Hotel Rydberg on 
one side and the 
Castle beyond the 
Norrbro on' the 
other. 

Miss Bremer 
lived at Stock- 
holm, and with 
her sister Agathe 
dispensed a liberal 
hospitality, after 
they had both fos- 
silized into some- 
thing like heroic 
old-maidhood. 
Swedish literar)- 
annals are full of 
such remarkable 
women, working 
wondrously to re- 
form their people. In fact, the general 
public know the Swedes chiefly by their 
celebrated women, by their singers and 
novel-writers. Many dehghtful bits have 



himself. The old Icelandic sagas, writ- 
ten in a language common at the time 
of their composition to Danes, Swedes 
and Norwegians, have been finely trans- 





NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



been translated by Longfellow, Mary 
Howitt and others, but the language is 
so easy of acquisition that any ordinary 
linguist can easily learn it and judge for 



BLANCH'S CAFfe. 

lated into German by Simrock, and have 
given to Carlyle much of his most bizarre 
imagery. It is a weird, wild, half-demonic 
poetry, the infinite babble of talking and 
toiling jotuns — the 
rhythm of the sea 
and the sharpness 
of death. The 
Sibylline books 
must have been 
such Edda- utter- 
ances. I know of 
nothing in the glit- 
^^ tering mythologies 
of the South so 
fine as the grand 
allegory of Ygg- 
drasil, the Tree 
of Life. 

Th i r ty-five 
years ago there 
were few hotels in 
Sweden. Before 
one's day was 
done one had to 
visit three or four places for one's meals. 
The hotels, such as they were, were call- 
ed "cellars" [kallare). You seldom dined 
where you slept. One had to go to a con- 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



225 



fectioner's for one's coffee and chocolate, 
to a wine-merchant for one's drinks, and 
to a restaurant for the midday meal 
This trotting about resulted in a fine 
appetite. Wherever you went were the 
fumes of the national drink, a sweet, 
potent punch, put up in dainty little 
iDottles and thick and clear. "Swenska 
punsch" soon makes the head swim. It 




LOWER VESTIBULE OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



and macadamized roads run in all di- 
rections. There are all the modern and 
improved ways of losing your life — burst- 
ing resei'voirs, collisions, explosions and 
capsizings. A universal suffrage of death 
has been established here as elsewhere. 
Rotten boilers, snags in rivers, boats 
brilliant with kerosene light, headlong 
speed and careless pilots are not un- 
known in Sweden. 

The habit of 
lunching in the very 
presence of dinner, 
of going to a side 
table and eating 
your fill of ancho- 
vies, raw herrings, 
smoked beef and 
cold eel - pie while 
dinner is on the 
very table, still pre- 
vails, and is hardly 
conducive to health. 
It is said that the 
habit of taking "a 
sup," as the Swedes 
call it, arose from 
the scarcity of deli- 
cacies. It was hard 
to get enough of any 
one nice thing to 
make a meal of; so 
you were first deli- 
cately innuendoed 
off to the brandy-ta- 
ble (as it is called), 
and then allowed to 
sit down to dinner. 
The practice is uni- 
versal in Sweden. 
Private houses, ho- 
tels and boarding- 
houses, all feed you 



is sweet as squills, odorous as rum. Be- 
fore railroads were built passengers were 
forwarded by post-horses and carrioles, 
the animals for which had to be furnished 
in seed-time and harvest by the peasantry 
under pain of fines. Provisions had to 
be carried by the traveller, and still have 
to be in some parts of the peninsula. 
Generally, however, things are now very 
different. Canals, railroads, steamboats 
15 



on preliminary 
scraps, and woe be to you if you innocent- 
ly turn away from the proffered luncheon ! 
You fare like an ascetic and feed yourself 
on odors. The ordinary routine of dining 
seems in Sweden to be in wild confusion. 
Soup sometimes ends instead of begin- 
ning the dinner. Iced soups and cold 
fish are dainties to the Scandinavian 
palate. Much of the soup is nauseously 
sweet, flavored with cherries, raspberries 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



and gooseberries, often with macaroon 
cakes and spikes of cinnamon floating 
wildly about in it. This is eaten as a 
sort of dessert, and is cold and often 
beautifully clear. If Heine bitterly re- 
viled the English for bringing vegetables 
on the table au natu- 
rel, there is no such 
complaint to be made 
here. Heaven, earth 
and hell are eaten with 
sauce — sauces red, 
white and blue, green, 
yellow and black — 
sauces celestial and 
sauces infernal. 
Strange combinations 
of ice - cream heaped 
over delicious apple- 
tarts, or strange dishes 
of berry -juice boiled 
down and mixed with 
farina, sugar and al- 
monds, then cooled, 
moulded and turned 
out into basins of 
cream, to be eaten with 
crushed sugar and 
wine, appear at the end 
of dinner. The Swedes 
share with the Danes 
and Arabs a passionate 
fondness for sweet- 
meats. Everything is 
slightly sweet: even 
green peas are sugar- 
ed, as well as the in- 
numerable tea- and 
coffee - cakes, so that 
long before the unhap- 
py tourist has finished 
his tour he is a hopeless dyspeptic or a 
raging Swedophobe. 

The manners of the people are excep- 
tionally affectionate. The Danes object 
to the Swedes because they are so gush- 
ing. The language is full of pet names, 
terms of endearment, titillating diminu- 
tives and tender. synonyms. In no lan- 
guage, not even in Greek, can a man be 
so covered with a sweet icing of flattery, 
and the Swedish women are adepts in 
this art. The language is very musical. 
There is an undulation of intonation, a 



rising and falling of silvery inflections, 
a predominance of soft, silken - footed 
vowels, which give a peculiar suavity to 
intercourse and stand in bold contrast 
with the heroic cast of the Swedish his- 
toric achievements. The love of music 




'THE wrestlers" OF MOLIN (NATIONAL MUSEUM). 



has taken deep root among the people. 
Everybody sings, fiddles, dances and 
belongs to a musical club. 

Travellers have noticed the clumsy 
household arrangements of the Swedes 
— the loose and careless building, the 
rough woodwork and primitive imple- 
ments — all pointing to indifference en- 
gendered by long habit and inaccessible 
to artistic influences. This, however, is 
gradually disappearing, and the Swedish 
houses are no longer, as they used to be, 
heaps of miscellaneous lumber crazily 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



227 



put together. French taste under Ber- 
nadotte and his successors has softened 
the barbarism of the Vasas, and one 
finds one's self in apartments as luxu- 
riously and tastefully furnished as any- 
where else in the world. Improvements 
are going on in hotel -life. Stockholm 
contains half a dozen fine hotels, and 
one of great elegance, the Grand Hotel, 
rivalling in beauty and extent the mag- 



nificent mass of the royal castle. Water- 
ing-places, baths, spas and seaside re- 
sorts are numerous. A visit to the baths 
is not only an essential element in the 
life of Miss Carlen's and Miss Bremer's 
heroines, but a general annual habit 
with the better-conditioned classes. Of 
course there is nothing to compare with 
the gorgeous chateaux on the Mediter- 
ranean, the lovely half-moon of the Bay 




ROYAL THEATRE. 



of Naples or the Arcadian snugness of 
a Swiss water-cure; but neither are the 
Swedes so critical. They content them- 
selves with unpretentious accommoda- 
tions, a bit of cultivated Eden to prom- 
enade in, a band of music and quantities 
of gossip. With these a month is agree- 
ably passed, and then the return-journey 
takes place. 

If England is the most aristocratic of 
European nations, Sweden is the coun- 
try most exuberantly devoted to titles, 
to minute exactions of etiquette and to 
all their attendant absurdities. It is said 
that the title "Your Ladyship" is given 
even to the wives of second lieutenants 
and clerks. Your Excellency ,Your Grace, 
Your Serenity, Your Transparency, suc- 
ceed one another in bewildering profu- 
sion at a metropolitan ball. There will 
be bitter disputes as to whether an Amer- 
ican minister, for example, has the right 



to the title Excellency. Amusement for 
an entire evening will be culled from the 
controversy whether Mrs. Chose is Frti 
or Froken or Madame or Mademoiselle 
or Grace. And the poor wo-man may be 
left dangling in the seventh heaven of 
beatific expectation for months before 
her place in society is finally settled. 

Among the nobility pride and pedigree 
exist in all their rigor, but the traveller 
notices a singular lack of those ancestral 
chateaux which so picturesquely over- 
hang the rivers of France and every- 
where embellish the delightful rural 
scenery of England. The red, turf- 
covered cabins of the peasants, with 
their one story and small garden, are 
unrelieved by quaint Gothic villas or 
towering Elizabethan mansions. The 
fanciful and picture-like costumes of the 
Middle Ages have almost disappeared. 

The condition of the lower orders in 



228 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



Sweden has long excited the notice of 
pohtical economists. Drunkenness and 
debauchery and criminahty have long 
prevailed among them, wedded to an 
external decency that renders these vices 
still worse. Few countries are more opu- 
lent in figures that tell against itself. The 



archives are stored with statistics that 
present a singular self-revelation. The 
Delphic injunction is carried out with a 
vengeance, but the self-knowledge seems 
of little avail. Still, great improvements 
have taken place since the classification 
of crimes a few years ago and the estab- 




GRAND HOTEL. 



lishment of penitentiaries bythe late king, 
Charles XV. Lunatic asylums, asylums 
for blind and deaf and hospitals for sick 
and indigent abound. In 1870 there were 
over two hundred thousand paupers in 
a population of little over four millions. 
The peasants make their own household 
implements, clothes and tools. Special 
provinces are renowned for special things 
— furniture, watches, cotton and woollen 
tissues, cut stone and marble, and min- 
ing industries. As soon as you set foot 
in Sweden you are saluted with the odor 
of fish. Salted salmon — the famous Ha- 
lensta-lax — is a universal tidbit, and her- 
ring, cod and other fish impregnate the 
air. Of course game abounds in the 
northern provinces : bears, foxes, rein- 
deer, hares, partridges, woodcock and 
wild duck contribute to the animation 



of the vast forests. Six or seven canals, 
of great length sometimes, meander 
through the heart of Sweden, and, as 
in Holland, the eye is seldom without the 
pleasing sight of bright or fantastic sails 
threading their way through the land- 
scape. Telegraph-wires stretch every- 
where, and internal improvements are 
progressing rapidly. 

From Stockholm we took a small 
steamer and went to the ancient Uni- 
versity of Upsala, passing on the way 
the lovely chateau of Drottningholm. 
Upsala was the old pagan capital of Swe- 
den, and in the vicinity are still shown 
three immense mounds where tradition 
says Odin, Thor and Balder are buried. 
A strange old ruinous church of great 
age stands near the spot, looking as if 
it might have been built by Odin him- 



GLIMPSES OF SWEDEN. 



229 



self. There was a pleasant little thatched 
inn near by, with a garden full of gilly- 
flowers, where we stopped and drank 
some genuine Scandinavian mead out 
of huge drinking-horns presented by 
Bernadotte. There was a legend on 
them telling how many illustrious folk 
had drunk from their mammoth sinu- 
osities—dukes, princes and what not. 
We soon satisfied our curiosity with the 




CHATEAU KARNAN. 

mead, and went to visit the house of 
Linnaeus, the large, two-towered cathe- 
dral and the famous library of the uni- 
versity. The chief treasure — and a ver- 
itable chef d'ceuvre it is — is the Codex 
argentetcs of Ulfilas, a translation of the 
New Testament into Gothic on purple 
parchment in letters of silver. The uni- 
versity maintains fifteen hundred stu- 
dents, and has a famous glee-club which 
won the prize at Vienna. 

Upsala is reached from Stockholm by 
rail or by canal, the latter of which passes 
part of the time through charming sce- 
nery. The summer twilight of this high 



northern region seems almost endless, 
ending at midnight, with daybreak at 
two. Our experience on the steam canal- 
boats was delightful. We took one at 
Stockholm, and went down through the 
heart of the country in and out of what 
appeared innumerable lakes and islands 
to our original starting-point, Goteborg. 
The canal -boats are "Tiny Tims" of 
water-craft, with three decks, handsome 
state-rooms, dining-room and hurri- 
cane-deck, and move swiftly, without 
much washing of the banks. These 
banks are lined with mountain-birch, 
just then crimson - spotted every- 
where with bright warm bunches of 
berries. This canal is, in fact, a 
series of canals which connect the 
Malar, Wener and Wetter lakes. 
The greatest height attained is one 
hundred and thirty - four feet, and 
there are numerous admirably ar- 
ranged locks. 

The interior of Sweden is unpic- 
turesque. The great central railroad 
traverses a region replete with mines 
and mining industries, and ends final- 
ly at Helsingfors, in whose vicinity lie 
the lovely ruins of the Chateau Kar- 
nan, and over the Sound the low- 
looming flats of Copenhagen and Elsi- 
nore. Not until the canal debouches 
into the Gota - Elf does the canal- 
scape wake up. Then there is a glo- 
rious bit of parenthetic scenery. The 
canal is constructed round the falls 
of the Gota -Elf (TroUhatta), the glim- 
mer of whose beautiful white tumbling 
water is a radiant vision in these gloomy 
woods. It is a scene of exquisite savage- 
ness, gloom and beauty. The fall is one 
hundred and twelve feet, extending in 
four breaks over thirty -six hundred feet 
in length. At the bottom it subsides into 
the glasslike Gota River, which we fol- 
low down to Goteborg. On the way the 
steamer passes Kongelf, formerly the 
capital of Norway, and the ruins of the 
chateau of Balmo, the most romantic and 
the most colossal in Sweden. 

James A. Harrison. 



TRY NORWAY 



^}^A. J)/ 




PEASANT-WOMEN. 



HAYMAKER OF ELFDAL. 



A JOLLY party of Americans stepped 
off the deck of a steamer at Liver- 
pool the other day, so to speak, full of 
warm enthusiasm and high glee at the 
pleasant prospect of a three months' 
holiday life abroad. They were to "do" 
London and Paris, of course ; Switzer- 
land and Italy, maybe ; Scotland, sure. 
To some of them all these localities were 
quite familiar : others of the party were 
230 



novices in foreign travel, and knew nci 
ther the half-moon slope of Regent street 
quadrant nor the gaslit arcades of the Rue 
de Rivoli. There was novelty enough be- 
fore these persons, of course, and they 
would not have been willing to spare the 
sight of one shop on the Boulevards for 
the promise of a view of Schliemann's 
site of ancient Troy. Paris, London, 
Lucerne and Florence were places of 



TRY NORWAY! 



231 



enough interest for them, said these sau- 
cy young folks, with each a self-sufficient 
toss of his or her good-looking head. 
But while the elders certainly looked 
forward with great pleasure to visiting 
these delightful places again, they nev- 
ertheless yearned after fresh fields to 
follow. 

We were talking about it as we rode 
to London in a railway - carriage which 
we had occupants enough to fill, and 
which therefore we were privileged in 
ticketing "Private" — the word written 




A GIRL-ROWER. 

in blue pencil on the back of one of 
our Chicago friend's business-cards, and 
stuck up defiantly in one of the plate- 
glass windows. "I wonder where we 
could ^o" said one of my friends, "that 
would furnish us with a new sensation ?" 

''Try Norway r' said a great, big-let- 
tered poster stuck up at the station which 
we were that moment passing. 

The result was a trial of Norway. But 
what is here written is only partly de- 
rived from that experience.* 

* See A. Vaudal's En Karriole a. travers la Suide 
ei la Norwcge. 



The tourist -mania has lately driven 
so many summer travellers from Great 
Britain into Sweden and Norway that 
these once secluded regions are becom- 
ing like nothing more than an extension 
of Scotland, and are quite the proper 
thing to "do " after a rapid run through 
the storied but well-trodden ground of 
Marmion and the Lady of the Lake. 
The first sounds which greet the travel- 
ler's ear when he strikes Scandinavian 
soil are not those of the language of the 
skalds and vikings : they are the crisp 
syllables of the Strand and Fleet street. 
Every summer steamers from Hull and 
Leith bring over to the port of Trond- 
hjem parties of British sportsmen and 
lady travellers. Your English are a 
race of born sportsmen, and the rivers 
of Norway are crammed with salmon, 
thousands upon thousands of trout play 
in the leaping torrents, while in the al- 
most unbroken woods abide red -deer, 
reindeer, grouse, woodcocks, elks. The 
Norwegian fjords, which cut so deeply 
into the coast, offer to pleasure-yachts a 
safe harbor and easy navigation. The 
Englishman who is neither a hunter nor 
a fisherman nor a sailor becomes a tour- 
ist, at least for a few months each year. 
He conscientiously climbs every moun- 
tain-peak in the vicinity of the route he 
is travelling, drives his karriole with the 
ardor of performing an expected duty 
in a thorough manner, and persistently 
talks English to the natives without the 
slightest regard to the fact of their not 
understanding it. And his laudable ef- 
forts are having their effect. "Yes," has 
almost dethroned "Ja" in Norway, even 
among natives talking together. A prov- 
erb has it that when founding a colony 
Spaniards begin by building a church, 
the Yankees a factory, the British an ho- 
tel. In the gorge of the Romsdal, the 
journey toward which is one of great 
difficulty, there is to be found an Eng- 
lish hotel which is quite in the London 
style, even as regards its prices, and 
where the smiling proprietor spreads 
before you the latest numbers oi Punch 
and the London Titnes. Sailing around 
the Northern Cape to Bergen, the sum- 
mer traveller sees on one of the islands 



232 



TRY NORWAY! 



of the lonely Qord a British flag flying 
from the top of an elegant cottage, whose 
dainty construction recalls the coquettish 
villas of the Isle of Wight. The steamer 
touches the shore, and the English col- 
ony is found to consist of a single house 
which was brought here direct from Lon- 
don, with its pretty pointed roof, its green 
shutters, its tiny tower 
and its graceful bow- 
window. Every sum- 
mer it is erected on the 
banks of some Scandi- 
navian fjord, and in the 
autumn it is taken down, 
board by board, and re- 
turns to London to pass 
the winter in a store- 
house. The proprietor 
is a jolly gentleman, a 
passionate lover of the 
forest and the stream, 
who receives his visitors 
in a room hung with 
. emblems of his prowess 
as a fisher and a hunter, 
with tents easy to pitch, 
and the last new thing in 
fowling-pieces and fish- 
ing-rods. Outside, a flour- 
ishing kitchen-garden is 
the result of the planting 
of the seeds he brought 
from England. His lit- 
tle house is an exact 
model of the one he 
lives in in the suburbs of London — a 
jointed toy easily fitted together. In the 
spring this eccentric gentleman boards 
his yacht, embarks his house upon it, 
takes with his baggage a collection of 
seeds, a cellar of wines, tinned provis- 
ions, tea, coffee and sugar, and turns 
prow toward the east. When he arrives 
on the Norway coast he takes possession 
of a deserted islet in a fish-haunted fjord, 
puts up his house and plants his salads. 
By day he hunts the deer and fishes for 
salmon : in the evening he eats the fish 
he has caught, the deer he has killed, 
the vegetables he has sown. The rare 
steamers which pass before his windows 
bring him his only news of the world. 
As soon as the first cold weather comes 



he folds his baggage, takes to sail again, 
returns to London and plays the other 
half of his life — fashionable gentleman 
during the winter, Robinson Crusoe dur- 
ing the summer. 

At the railway-station of Malmo an 
ambulatory merchant runs along by the 
car-windows and offers travellers a tov. 




costumes: parish of mora. 

a diminutive representation of the kar- 
riole. It is a little arm-chair mounted 
on large wheels and hung between long 
shafts. You put the karriole in your 
pocket and take the express -train for 
Stockholm. In the train the aspect of 
your fellow-travellers differs in no re- 
spect from that cosmopolitan character 
which you would expect in any express- 
train near large cities in Europe. All 
countries seem represented in the dress 
of these tourists, which varies sufficient- 
ly to include the plaid of the Highlander 
and the Castilian sombrero. As yet you 
see nothing unmistakably Swedish ex- 
cept perhaps a few tall and extremely 
blond army officers, wearing the severe- 
ly-plain uniform of the Royal Guards oi 



TRY NORWAY! 



233 



the black and gold dolman of the Charles 
XV. Hussars. 

Ten years ago Stockholm was only 
accessible by sea. Even now it is called 
the Venice of the North. The streets are 
arms of the sea. A fleet of war-ships 
could defile in battle array under the 
palace - windows of the Swedish king. 
The sole vehicle of Stockholm is a light 
steamer, a microscopic affair propelled 
by a miniature steam-engine. It pulls 
up at the curb frequently, disembarks 
the passengers and rings its bell for an- 




COSTUMES: PARISH OF LEKSAND. 

Other load. Captain, engineer, helms- 
man and fireman are all embodied sat- 
isfactorily in the person of one small 
boy. He collects the fare from the pas- 
sengers, gives the signal for leaving, and 
obeys it — slows up or crowds on steam. 
On these boats you may study at your 
leisure the peasant girls and women wear- 
ing their picturesque provincial costume. 
Their short skirts disclose stockings of a 
brilliant red ; a brown or green bodice 
imprisons their waists ; quaint, stiffly - 
starched caps cover their heads. The 



physical aspect of the Swedish popula- 
tion is blond, large, tall : in repose the 
face denotes great placidity, but in speak- 
ing the blue eyes lighten up with intelli- 
gence and the language becomes rapid 
and full of color. There is much in 
them which recalls the German charac- 
ter, and yet they are more like the Ger- 
mans as depicted by Tacitus than the 
Prussians of our day. The Germans of 
antiquity built neither towns nor villages. 
Every family lived isolated, with its servi- 
tors, under the absolute authority of the 
chief. This is the case in Scan- 
dinavia to - day. Every family 
owns and inhabits its own guard, 
a little miniature state, where the 
father of the family is the king. 

The Scandinavian gaard or 
gord is not a farm, neither is it 
a hamlet ; for, though it some- 
times consists of many buildings, 
one man only is their proprietor. 
It is a collection of eight or ten 
wooden houses, generally paint- 
ed in the most brilliant colors, and 
still further adorned with contrast- 
ing bands of color around the 
doors and windows. These build- 
ings are erected around a square, 
so as to form a more or less ir- 
regular courtyard : one is used as 
a storehouse, another as a dairy, 
another as a work-room where the 
women spin and sew, for the col- 
ony must clothe itself. The chief 
of the family often keeps several 
buildings for his own private 
use : one is his dining - room, 
another his bedroom, another 
his kitchen. The other cottages 
are used by his serving-men, whose posi- 
tion is more that of vassals than the or- 
dinary domestics of our day. A second 
line of buildings encircles the first : it is 
composed of stables, barns, etc. ; and 
beyond these lies a broad zone of culti- 
vated fields, where the grain grows yel- 
low under the warm sun of summer, and 
farther on beautiful green prairies dotted 
with flocks. The lord and master of this 
little empire, though a peasant, is often 
a member of the Diet and helps to rule 
the land. " There is only one state in 



234 



TRY NORWAY! 



Europe which from the poHtical point of 
view can be compared to Sweden," said 
a young Scandinavian officer: "it is the 
canton of Uri in Switzerland. Like our 



country, it is governed by peasants.' ' The 
peasant influence has been powerful in 
Sweden for centuries. This laborious 
and independent class of men has never 




known what it is to perform servile work 
for any master : on the contrary, during 
the Middle Ages the Swedish peasants 
themselves held serfs, but to Sweden be- 
longs the honor of being the first country 



in Europe to abolish serfdom, and to 
another Scandinavian state, Denmark, 
belongs the glory of first freeing negro 
slaves in our times. 

The love of brig^ht color is universal 



TRY NORWAY! 



235 



in Scandinavia. The houses are paint- 
ed every hue of the rainbow ; the cos- 
tumes of the people are as high-colored 
as those worn by the figurantes of the 
opera ; and even the most ordinary tools 
and instruments are as flaming in color 
as a barber's pole. At Leksand the boats 
which ply on the lakes and rivers are 
painted red, blue and yellow, and are 
guided by girl -rowers as gayly dressed 
as possible. These variegated boats 
bring down almost the entire popula- 
tion of the four parishes nearabout Lek- 
sand to the rendezvous which God gives 
each Sunday to the faithful. Every 
gaard possesses a bark of its own dedi- 
cated to this special usage, and the fam- 
ily relic is transmitted from generation 
to generation. The company of peas- 
ants attired in their Sunday costumes is 
a brilliant sight — curious too, for the cut 
of the garments is several centuries old. 
It is a real delight to the eyes to con- 
template these strange costumes, where 
red, blue, green and yellow are married 
so happily and without a jar, for taste and 
harmony dominate the whole. What more 
graceful, more elegant, than these white 
skirts trimmed with red which seem to 
be the uniform of the girl-rowers ? The 
white jacket opening over a scarlet vest 
seems the thing of all others to set off 
the beauty of a handsome young man. 
This father of a family, with his square- 
cut coat with enormous skirts, his buckled 
shoes and his long jabot of lace, looks 
like a bailiff of the good old times. And 
these peasant -girls, with striped skirts, 
bodices adorned with jewels, and odd 
head - dresses, look for all the world as 
if they had just stepped out from be- 
tween the illustrated pages of a medi- 
aeval missal. The worship of color is 
universal. The oars of the boats are 
sculptured and colored, and in the fields 
you see harvesters wearing embroidered 
breeches and scarlet stockings, and whole 
battalions of haymakers their long rakes 
painted half red and half yellow. Ev- 
ery parish, every family, has its favorite 
colors. 

The karriole is a Norwegian institu- 
tion, but some provinces of Sweden 
have borrowed it. It resembles a cart. 



a drosky, a tilbury, a sulky, yet differs 
from all. It is composed of a circular 
wooden seat for one person, ornamented 
with a hard flat cushion like a pancake, 
and perched on a pair of large wheels. 
Between the seat and the axletree two 
half hoops of wood serve as springs and 
make a base pretence of modifying the 
violence of the jolting. Between the 
long shafts stands a rusty little horse 
with unkempt mane, quick eye, prom- 
inent ribs and a nervous and steely 
ankle. The harness is as strange as 
the vehicle, as wild as the horse. One 
of the reins is a rope, the other a leather 
strap rusty with age and weather. But 
even here the Scandinavian love of color 
comes in. The horse's collar is orna- 
mented with carved wood painted in 
brilliant hues, and to it hang a half 
dozen or more sleigh-bells. You swing 
up into your rolling chair, your valise 
fixed between your feet : your young 
conductor hands you the reins and 
jumps up behind, and kneels on a nar- 
row board there, his hands holding on 
to your back. When you are ready he 
utters a sibilant sound something like 
this : pr-pr-pr ; and to the horse this is 
a magic utterance. He shakes his mane, 
starts off at a gallop, plunges down hill 
with his belly to the ground, and takes 
the ascents by storm. The karriole fol- 
lows him, jumping, bounding, dancing, 
describing unheard-of zigzags over the 
bosom of Mother Earth. Relays are 
made at certain stages. The traveller 
leaves not only horse, but karriole, and 
enters another, bag and baggage. The 
boy who accompanied the preceding re- 
lay receives the stipulated price of the 
conveyance, shakes hands cordially with 
the traveller and returns home with his 
horse and karriole. One of his youth- 
ful compatriots succeeds him on the 
fresh karriole, and thus the traveller 
passes in review the coming generation 
of Scandinavia. Though the karrioles 
vary little in appearance, no one of your 
young companions resembles the other. 
One, timid and fearful, crouches behind 
on the board, hangs tightly by your 
shoulders and never utters a word ; an- 
other, wide awake to an astonishing de- 



236 



TRY NORWAY! 



gree, carries on a ceaseless discourse in 
his own language, and seems quite 
indignant that you do not understand 
Swedish like a native. Often the boy 



jumps to the ground, ti'ots beside the 
vehicle, springs up again with a bound 
on to the shafts, stands there astride like 
a circus -rider, jumps, dances and turns 




summersaults, without the pony relaxing 
his headlong pace for an instant. Some- 
times your young postilion, anxious to 
show the superiority of Swedish horse- 
flesh over all other in the world, stim- 



ulates the courser of the karriole. You 
hold the reins, it is true, but the animal 
pays no attention to any one but his fel- 
low-countryman. It is he who urges him 
on by a gesture or stops him by a word. 



TRY NORWAY! 



237 



For the most part, however, the best 
energies of the gamin are devoted to 
sparing the horse, which is perhaps the 
only treasure, and certainly the friend 




A TOFTE PRINCE. 

and companion, of the family. The whip 
is an instrument almost unknown in Swe- 
den, and if you venture to caress the back- 
bone of your horse with a switch, the poor 
boy behind will groan at every stroke as 
if he were being switched himself. 

The diligence of France and the stage- 
coach of England are replaced in Scan- 
dinavia not by one but a whole proces- 
sion of karrioles, the column headed by 
the post-carrier. It is great fun to meet 
a joyous, noisy caravan like this, with 
bells ringing, laughter and chat resound- 
ing, in the stillness of these great soli- 
tudes. Conversation is carried on by the 
tr -vellers jumping down and running 
alongside of one another's karriole. All 
karrioles upset once or twice a day — this 
is the expected average — in which case 
the horse, trained by long custom, stops : 
all the other karrioles in the procession 



do the same ; the gamin in charge of 
the conveyance examines his harness 
and vehicle to see if anything is bro- 
ken ; the traveller picks himself up ; and 
away goes the caravan again at a lively 
gallop. 

Although their religious faith does not 
encourage belief in the heathen gods 
their ancestors worshipped, good Luther- 
ans as they are, the common people are 
superstitious. In the pale dusk which is 
their night strange figures are seen to 
float on the surface of their steel-blue 
lakes: enchanted palaces rise slowly 
before their eyes. Mirage is a common 
sight to the sailor, but your Scandinavian 
explains not such fairy visions by prosaic 
reasoning. The airy palace seen to rise 
from the lake is the home of the Scandi- 
navian siren with the glassy eyes and the 
seductive and perfidious voice. Rising 




A NORWEGIAN BRIDE. 



upon the narrow plank behind, the kar- 
riole-boy in a frightened voice cries out, 
"Elf! elf!" and points eagerly toward 
the blue vapor which lifts from the waters 



238 



TRY NORWAY! 



on a summer night. In it the Scandina- 
vians think they behold sweet faces and 
transparent forms. The fairies dance 
upon the water without ruffling it, and 



whosoever approaches too near to them 
will surely be inflamed with love for them. 
But when an elf timidly approaches the 
bank and allows the mortal to press her 




to his breast, she casts a pitiful look into 
his eyes and expires in his embrace. 
Then slowly she vanishes in the wave, 
and unknown disturbances are in store 
for that wretched lover in the future. 



The guide of the karriole is not always 
a boy. Girls not infrequently perform 
the office. When it is remembered that 
necessity obliges them to hang on to the 
gentlemen's shoulders with their hands. 



TRY NORWAY! 



239 



and even sometimes to lay their heads 
on the gentlemen's backs to get a little 
rest, it can easily be conceived that the 
spectacle is an amusing one. 

One of the most thrilling sights in Scan- 
dinavia is the cataract of the Skeggedal- 
foss, beside which the favorite Swiss falls 
of Staubach and Giesbach are but trifling 
cascades. From the neighboring heights 
the tourist beholds a panorama composed 
of sixty leagues of mountains, glaciers 
and eternal snows. On these heights 
blooms a special vegetation, brilliant and 
poisonous. Here aconite exhibits its pale 
bunches, belladonna reddens the bushes 
with its scarlet berries, and the tourist 
brings back as a souvenir of his visit a 
monster bouquet of poisons. The ascent 
of the heights near the gorge is very try- 
ing : difficult from the base, as the apex 
is approached it becomes almost impos- 
sible. But the climb is well repaid. A 
fairy spectacle is spread out below, above 
and around. Three or four torrents as 
large as rivers fall together from the 
height of a thousand feet into a lake, 
where they mingle their waters in foam, 
roar and fury. 

The descendants of Harold with the 
Fine Hair, the first king who ever reigned 
over Norway, still exist. They have in- 
habited an estate called the Tofte for 
many centuries, and they are known as 
the Toftes. They still preserve their an- 
cient parchments and their genealogical 
tree. They are rich too, owning three 
hundred cows, and to visit all their es- 
tates takes a week's time, and to receive 
their farmers' accounts the entire space 
of a day. They intermarry among them- 
selves, and have little intercourse with 
those whom they consider beneath them. 
Proposals of marriage have frequently 
come from outsiders, and it has been 
urged upon them that their race will soon 
be extinguished unless it is replenished 
with new blood. They answer that they 
know this, but prefer to have no sons at 
all rather than sons less noble than them- 
selves. The chief or king of the Toftes 
is a vigorous old man, but his only son 
is a pale and feeble youth who plainly 
shows the poverty of a blood which is 
never rejuvenated by new currents. This 



prince wears the square-cut coat, knee- 
breeches and buckled shoes used in 
France in IVIadame de Pompadour's 
time, but his cap is a revolutionary bit 
of headgear such as would hardly have 
been tolerated at the elegant court of 
Versailles. The Toftes show the genea- 
logical tree. Near its roots appear the 
names of those kings to whom affection- 
ate surnames have been given — Harold 
of the Fine Hair, Hardrath with the 
Bare Feet, Harold the Red, Bjorn with 
the Sparkling Eyes. The topmost branch 
bears the name of the two Toftes w^io 
exhibit the precious document. One 
branch is broken off rudely, and the 
Toftes explain that this is a scion of the 
race who no longer belongs to the fam- 
ily, having disgraced himself by an alli- 
ance with a woman not of the blood- 
royal. Among the curious relics exhib- 
ited to the visitor is a tall, heavy crown 
rising into points, upon which silver bells 
are hung which ring at every touch. 
This crown has nothing especially royal 
in it, although it has been for many cen- 
turies the property of this princely fam- 
ily. Every family in good circumstances 
in this locality owns a similar one, and 
places it on the heads of its daughters 
the day they marry. The precious relic 
is transmitted from generation to genera- 
tion. The bride is hung with ornaments 
when she walks to the altar. She marches 
slowly to the ceremony, as pretentiously 
tricked out as a Spanish Madonna. 

A dashing vessel is lying at anchor in 
one port, getting ready for an expedition 
to the Lofoden Isles, there to fish for her- 
ring and cod. One of its masts is broken 
short off, and many indications show its 
recent fierce battle with the tempests. 
The shape of the ship is truly Norwegian, 
and announces plainly its descent from 
the pirate vessels, those dragens of the 
sea. The prow rises above the wave 
and twists about like the neck of a ser- 
pent : behind is a sort of tower which 
serves as a shelter for the sailors during 
a tempest. Formerly, this was a sort of 
block-house, where the defenders of the 
ship received the enemy when they at- 
tempted to board her. Now her only 
sea-fights are with cod and herring, which 



240 



TR Y NOR IVA Y! 



every spring invade the waters about the 
Lofodeu Isles in myriads. The master 
of the bark wears cowskin boots, a fur- 
lined jacket, a leathern apron and thick 



woollen mittens. He looks like a bear 
back from its hunt and satisfied with its 
booty. His wife lives with him in his 
damp home ; and if she had not on a 




OLD CHURCH IN TJiE THELEMARKEN. 



thick green skirt bordered with red over 
her boots and her pantaloons, it \^ould 
be difficult to assign the proper sex to 
the two spouses. Two or three sailors 



accoutred in the same guise make up 
the crew. The boss has navigated the 
North Sea many years, and has made 
the ocean -journey on the Atlantic. He 



TR Y NOR WA Y! 



241 



has seen England and the United States, 
and speaks the Enghsh language quite 
fluently. He was doing well "off there," 
but he got homesick for his Norwegian 
fjords, and returned to them. These 
Norwegian fishers prepare for sea as sol- 
diers make ready for the battle-field : no 
man knows whether he will ever return. 
In the month of March word reaches 
them that cod have arrived in the West 
Fjord, near the Lofodens, and they set 
out. From the North Cape to Bergen 
the whole coast is alive : barks of every 
size and shape, schooners, brigs, luggers, 
yachts, all set sail. When they arrive 
at the isles the fishing -area is divided. 
Four or five hundred boats cast their 
nets at once, and draw them in full of 
the squirming prisoners. The remain- 
der of the crew have landed in a shel- 
tered place, and await the arrival of the 
fish to cure them. As soon as a net casts 
its living cargo on the rocks the execu- 
tioners advance : each seizes his victim, 
hits it, despatches it with a stroke of his 
knife, cuts off its head, which he slings 
into a tunnel of oil, drags out its entrails, 
and then bites greedily into the yet warm 
liver of the creature as if it were a ripe 
fruit. This is the battle of the fishers. 
They have on their side skill and au- 
dacity, but the fish have on theirs the 
tempest, the Maelstrom which draws 
in ships and sucks them down, the icy 
currents of the North Sea. So reason- 
ed the boss when the subject of cruelty 
to cod was broached to him. The Nor- 
wegian sailors are reputed the best in 
the world. A British admiral once said, 
■"To rule the seas I should like a fleet 
of English ships manned by Norwegian 
sailors." 

Bergen is the principal port where all 
this wealth of fishing industry goes. Ev- 
ery year Bergen receives six hundred 
thousand cod from the Lofoden Isles, 
and sends to the European markets two 
hundred thousand barrels of salted fish 
and oil. The little town is perched in 
a most uncomfortable situation on a 
rocky steep incessantly beaten by ter- 
rific rains and at the mercy of all the 
storms which gather and break on the 
North Sea. Why the tov/n is not wash- 
16 



ed away seems a marvel. But, such as 
it is, it has been perched there for six 
hundred years. 

The Norwegians claim the discovery 
of America of course. In the year 1000 
the navigator Leif with thirty-five com- 
panions sighted the Isle of Newfound- 
land, and pushing on to the westward he 
found a vast country covered with vines, 
to which, like our temperance neighbors 
in their New Jersey town, he gave the 
name of Vineland. This was North 
America, near the mouth of the St. Law- 
rence River. A Scandinavian colony es- 
tablished itself on the banks of the river, 
and soon pushed onward to the New 
England coasts : it is claimed that a com- 
pany even ventured as far as the bay 
whereon Boston now sits so proudly. 
Regular communication was established 
between Norway and the New World. 
The pope appointed bishops in America 
four centuries before Las Casas. About 
1350 the civil wars which raged among 
the Scandinavian peoples and the ter- 
rible black pest — a scourge not yet for- 
gotten in Norway — seein to have caused 
an interruption of communication be- 
tween the two continents. It was near- 
ly a century and a half later before the 
New World was definitely discovered. 
The spirit of Norwegian adventure show- 
ed Europeans the route to America ; 
chance lost it ; genius brought it to light 
again. Such is their tale. 

The Thelemarken province is a cor- 
ner of Norway almost unknown to tour- 
ists. The English go to the North Cape, 
to the Lofoden Isles, but have not yet 
quite discovered the Thelemarken, prob- 
ably because it is nearer home than Lap- 
land and Norrland. The manners and 
customs of past ages seem to have taken 
refuge in this valley imprisoned on all 
sides by lofty mountains. It presents a 
curious sample of Norway as it was two 
centuries ago : costumes, manners, cha- 
racters, all have a primitive savor. The 
chairs are but trunks of trees coarsely 
hewed out, with a part of the trunk left 
to form a back. The table is another 
tree-trunk, and on it are plates, cups and 
spoons made of sculptured wood paint- 
ed in brisfht colors. Both furniture and 



242 



TR Y NOR WA Y! 



walls are ornamented with proverbs, 
moral sentences, quotations from the Bi- 
ble — sometimes in Scandinavian, some- 
times in Latin. Around a wooden milk- 



bowl you read, "Drink, and thank God;" 
at the bottom of a wooden platter these 
words of the Psalmist : " Eat with thy 
friend: let thine enemy eat;" over the 




door : " If the Lord does not guard the 
house, he who guards it will guard in 
vain;" and on the bed-tester: "Man 
sows: God prospers the seed." In the 
bed sleep sometimes mother, father and 



half a dozen children. Your karriole 
guide, though an urchin but four or five 
years of age, has his waist encircled by 
a stout leather belt in which hangs an 
unsheathed dagger. All the inhabitants 



TRY NORWAY! 



243 



of the Thelemarken wear this arm, and 
use it with dexterity. 

After a long twilight the night falls. 
It is the first time for six weeks that 
you have known what darkness is. You 
greet the stars as old acquaintances who 
have been long absent. By this roman- 
tic light you discern in the distance a 
strange black mass whose size and un- 
usual form almost frighten you. It looks 
like an immense monster with shining 
scales, humpbacked, stretching out long 
weird arms which terminate in grima- 
cing heads. At sight of it the karriole- 
boy extends his tiny hand, and indicat- 
ing a point beyond it, says, "Priester- 
gaard " — the gaard or farm of the priest. 
This explains the monster. The curious 
old mass is simply one of those ancient 
Norwegian churches which are imitated 
to some extent in all parts of Norway, 
but in the Thelemarken are undoubted 
originals. Imagine a squat wooden ed- 
ifice nearly rectangular, surrounded by 
galleries open to the air and daylight, 
and surmounted by a tangled mass of 
slate roofs which pile themselves one 
above the other, run up into spires or 
round out in cupolas, and from every 
angle of which and on every frontage 
jut out dragon-faced gargoyles. These 
churches, essentially Scandinavian, are 
three or four centuries old. The cold of 
the North, which disagrees with stone, 
respects their wooden walls. There is 
scarcely anything stranger in building 
than this disordered architecture, which 
defies symmetry and is strikingly effec- 
tive in spite of all rul6s to the contrary, 
and especially in the steel blue of the 
northern moonlight makes a fantastic 
and impressive silhouette against the 
azure background of the atmosphere. 

At the door of the pastor's house a 
knock brings a venerable patriarch to 
open. The priest knows neither French, 
English nor German, but being asked 
for a few minutes' rest and shelter in 
Latin, replies fluently in that language, 
and presses the traveller to stop all 
night. 

Sometimes your karriole will bring you 
to the gate of a sort of rustic castle, the 
mistress of which comes out herself to 



meet you, surrounded by a whole popu- 
lation of children and servants. The 
hostess wears a pair of trousers of black 
woollen stuff which reach quite over the 
feet and are tucked into her sculptured 
wooden shoes, and around the ankle are 
beautified with embroidery in brilliant 
colors ; a short skirt, not reaching to the 
knees, something like the Greek petti- 
coat ; the bodice open in front and orna- 
mented with a double row of jewels ; a 
multi-colored scarf twisted several times 
about her waist ; and on her head a sort 
of cape, falling on the shoulders and em- 
broidered to match the trousers. On a 
sign from this lady the traveller is con- 
ducted into "the house of the stranger " 
— a house specially reserved for hospital- 
ity. In it are antique beds overhung with 
embroidered phrases in illuminated let- 
ters, arm-chairs with more sculpture than 
stuffing about them, and walls adorned 
with consoling maxims from the Bible 
painted in Gothic characters. Servants 
busy themselves silently to provide for 
your wants without waiting for a request 
or asking a question, in obedience to the 
motto inscribed over the door of the stran- 
ger's house : "One must not fatigue the 
guest one receives. He needs repose, 
dry clothing, and not to be questioned." 
The southern part of Sweden is pierced 
with canals, grand works which have im- 
mortalized the name of Ericsson, the civil 
engineer. These canals link the lakes, 
and, putting these great floods into com- 
munication, offer to commerce as well as 
to tourists a means of transport which 
facilitates the journeys and shortens dis- 
tances. In twenty-two hours the Dais- 
land Canal takes the traveller from the 
Norwegian frontier to Lake Wener. It 
opens a passage through solid rocks, 
climbs mountains by means of sluices 
cut in granite, glides among wooded 
heights, crosses lakes and boldly passes 
over a cataract, the Hafverud falls. The 
boat, floating in an iron aqueduct, a sort 
of gigantic gutter suspended in air, sees 
below it torrents of water and foam pre- 
cipitating themselves into an abyss. Near 
the Hafverud Cataract is Lake Wener, 
an immense interior basin whose waters 
are often as tumultuous as those of the 



2 44 



77? y NOR IVA Y! 



ocean. It is the largest lake in Europe 
after Ladoga in Russia. A quaint little 
town called Wenersborg is situated on 
the southern extremity of the lake. It 



is merely a group of houses without streets 
or squares. Sheep nibble unconcernedly 
before the very door of the hotel, where 
the smiling proprietor complacently 




stands awaiting the customers whom 
every steamer brings him in the sum- 
mer-time. He is a man who understands 
his business and means to make himself 
agreeable. Addressing the French trav- 



ellers, whose Parisian air and speech an 
nounce their nationality, he bows to tht 
ground and says with an accent which 
would do no discredit to a Boulevard 
lounger, "Messieurs, it is with a real 



TRY NORWAY! 



245 



pleasure that I place my services at your 
disposition." Without waiting for an an- 
swer, he turns to a group of English peo- 
ple and repeats the same phrase in Eng- 
lish. A Viennese family complete the 
list, and to them Boniface proffers the 
same remark, word for word, in German. 
But when an effort is made to pursue 
this happy opening to more extended 
converse, relating to something to eat 
and drink, bath, soap and towels and a 
bed, English, French and German being 
in turn tried, all is found to be in vain. 
Boniface speaks no language but Swe- 
dish, and has only learned a single phrase 
in the other tongues, which he uses out 
of compliment to his patrons. 

Near Wenersborg are the celebrated 
falls of Trolhatta. For many miles the 
Gota-Elf River, held in by two steep 
banks, rushes from cascade to cascade, 



throws itself from cliff to cliff; now pours 
down an abyss, now beats against a men- 
acing rock ; boils, bounds, launches in 
the air great volumes of foam, and final- 
ly finds a calm and green limpidity in a 
basin two hundred feet below which lies 
in everlasting repose. The boat — which 
cannot very well navigate a body of wa- 
ter so restless as this — finds a pleasant 
journey in a neighboring canal ; and the 
travellers, who have gone ashore to see 
the falls, are surprised to suddenly be- 
hold their boat at a distance of three 
hundred feet above their heads, at the 
top of a giant staircase cut out in a 
mountain's flank. Each step is an im- 
mense trough which alternately empties 
and fills in order to raise or lower the 
water for the boat's descent — the locks 
of our own Niagaran Lockport on a 
wilder scale. ' Olive Logan. 




HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



PART I. 




VIEW OF WAITZEN. 



AN old gentleman whom I had known 
in other climes, and when he was see- 
ing better days, accompanied me through 
the darkened streets of Pe'sth to a garden 
in the suburbs, and, seating me before a 
green table under a mass of vines, he 
knocked loudly and cried out, "Now I 
am going to show you something very 
curious." 

A sleepy - looking waiter shuffled in 
and took the venerable gentleman's or- 
der for a flask of the very best red wine. 
At that moment a little curtain amid the 
246 



foliage rolled up, and a dashing young 
fellow, with a sinister look about the 
eyes, came forward to the smoking foot- 
lights of a tiny stage and began to sing a 
song. 

"That's it!" cried my friend. "He 
always sings the brigand ballad at this 
hour. You shall be delighted. Listen!" 

I did. It was the most remarkable 
song that I ever heard. In it the brigand 
of the steppes related the savage joys 
of his adventvu-ous life — the peril, the 
assault, the battles with herdsmen and 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



2^7 



travellers, as well as his rustic love. The 
Hungarian language sounded extremely 
poetic as this stage-brigand sang it. In 
the music there was the wild wail, the 
intense passionate earnestness, the rude 
poetry which you can understand when 
you have heard Remenyi play upon his 
violin or Liszt upon his piano. What is 
this wonderful, this fascinating echo in 
a minor key which is heard in the mu- 
sic throughout South - eastern Europe ? 
Whence comes it ? 

Brigands still flourish in some parts 
of Hungary, but when caught they are 
so severely dealt with that many are 
abandoning the career for the safer ones 
of shepherds or nomadic fortune-tellers 
and tinkers. The peasantry have a dan- 
gerous tendency to make popular heroes 
of them. Among these brigands have 
now and then appeared adorable types 
of beauty, of exquisite manly grace, 
which made many fair ladies' hearts 
ache. In a few years the last brigand 
will have vanished, in company with 
the remaining bits of costume to which 
certain people in Hungary still fondly 
cling. Let the artist who would catch 
the picturesque aspects of peasant -life 
in this country hasten, for the young 
generation is getting into the hideous 
black clothes, slouch hats and sombre 
petticoats that offend the eye in North- 
ern Germany. Munkacsy has painted 
a few bits from sketches made among 
the lower classes of his fellow-country- 
men : how fresh, original and sympa- 
thetic they are ! And what a noble head 
the artist himself has ! It is a real Hun- 
garian type, symmetrica], strong, framed 
in handsome beard and crowned with 
finely - colored hair. When Munkacsy 
walks on the Paris boulevards passers 
who do not know him turn to stare at 
him. " If he is not something exceptional, 
he ought to be," they say to themselves. 
One sees dozens of striking faces in the 
course of a day's walk in Pesth. Some- 
times they are deceptive, and the lad 
whom one takes for an incipient poet is 
only a vulgar schoolboy, with few ideas 
above his dinner and his geography, or 
the man of noble and stately port is a 
waiter in a restaurant. Beauty has been 



lavished on many people without respect 
to class or fortune. Yet the ugly types 
are so hideous that I doubt if they can be 
equalled elsewhere. The gypsies at the 
Kaiserbad and around the other "oven "- 
like heated grounds from which Ofen 
takes its name are as fantastic as the 
beggars in Dore's illustrations to Bal- 
zac's Contes Drolatiques. The old peas- 
ant-women who beg on the fine bridge 
over the Danube are such wrecks of hu- 
manity that one vainly endeavors to dis- 
cover in them any remnants of past grace 
or beauty. 

The Esterhazy Gallery is so well known 
that I will only mention the extreme pride 
which the Hungarians take in it — a pride 
heightened, perhaps, by the fact that the 
beautiful collection was ceded by Vien- 
na to Pesth. There are Hungarians who 
would willingly take the Grand Opera- 
house, the Belvidere, the Votive Church 
and the Palace of Schonbrunn from Vien- 
na if they could, although they have an 
admirable opera of their own, and pal- 
aces enough to house the memories of" 
all their kings. The Hungarians are 
good Wagnerites, and bestow much at- 
tention upon the music of the erratic and 
immortal Richard. 

Up river, toward Vienna, the intelli- 
gent traveller who will not be dictated 
to by Murray or Baedeker, and who 
scorns haste, can find dozens of inter- 
esting excursions. He will not think the 
Hungarian village very impressive, es- 
pecially if he happens into it on a rainy 
day. The streets have no sidewalks, and 
are speedily transformed into mud-pud- 
dles under the furious rains which now 
and then beat across hill and plain. The 
houses are low, blessed with but few win- 
dows, and the doors are narrow. The 
inn has some wooden benches in front 
of its principal entrance, and there wag- 
oners sit and drink, even in the rain. 
Solemn processions of geese promenade 
the muddy ways, now and then indulg- 
ing in sinister cries rather more discord- 
ant than any accents to be heard in the 
human dialects thereabouts. Bare-limb- 
ed peasant-girls stare at the strangers and 
laugh at them. Even an Austrian excites 
their attention and their critical remarks. 



248 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



The extensive fleet of Danube steam- I tance above the new^er and principal 
ers is built at Old Ofen, but a short dis- I town of that name. Old Ofen is charm- 




ingly situated among vineyards, and the 
activity of the fresh-water dockyards and 
the beauty of the vine -clad slopes are 



only made more striking by contrast 
with many ugly and tumbling hovels 
in which a rabble of low Jews herd to- 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



249 



gether. The Jews have been so ambi- 
tious to build a fine synagogue that they 
have quite forgotten decency in housing 
themselves. Their church at Alt Ofen 
exceeds any other of its religion in Aus- 
tria-Hungary in grace of design and 
beauty of decoration. Hundreds of work- 
men are employed in the yards of the 
Danube Steam Navigation Company, for 
the number of barges, towboats, rafts and 
express steamers required for the com- 
merce of the great stream is legion. De- 
struction of property is rare, but the com- 
pany has found it necessary to increase 
its stock steadily for many years, and in 
the winter harbor at Pesth there is a ver- 
itable flotilla when ice has formed on the 
stream. 

Waitzen, Gros-Maros, Wissegrad and 
Gran are all so unlike any towns in Mid- 
dle Europe that the traveller whose ass- 
thetic sense has been dulled by too much 
sameness in France and Belgium and 
Northern Germany will feel his heart 
leap up with a sense of gratitude when 
he sees them. Waitzen is full of quaint 
monuments left by the Romans or con- 
structed in the Middle Ages ; and in the 
episcopal palace especially — for it is the 
seat of a see — there are great numbers 
of curious relics. The cathedral is not 
more than a hundred years old, but is a 
noble monument, resembling its mighty 
brother at Gran above. Perhaps the most 
noticeable peculiarity of Waitzen is the 
manner in which the town is divided into 
quarters. In one lives a Roman Cath- 
olic population, which has little or noth- 
ing to do with the Protestants, who are 
ensconced in a section by themselves ; 
and both these peoples consider that 
they have a right to look down upon 
the Servians, who of course profess the 
Greek Protestant rite. Waitzen is like 
many other towns in Austria -Hungary 
in the variety of its populations and the 
diversity of their beliefs, but unlike most 
of them in the manner in which its peo- 
ples keep apart. 

Wissegrad (the"high fortress"), where 
Matthias Corvinus built many a pleasant 
chateau and embellished numerous gar- 
dens, is a monument to the stupid mania 
for destruction which characterized the 



Turks' entry into Europe. In the elev- 
enth century Hungarian kings had al- 
ready established themselves there, and 
the peasants in the vineyards can tell 
the lingering pedestrian any quantity of 
legends, more or less authentic, but all, to 
theirthinking, solidly founded on the eter- 
nal rock. The old walls of the fortress, 
twice dismantled — once by the Turks, 
and once by the emperor Leopold — are 
bathed by the smoothly-flowing Danube, 
which here is exquisitely beautiful. A 
lofty ruined tower, the most conspicuous 
objectat Wissegrad, was once a state pris- 
on, and many a victim of royal caprice 
languished here for long years, hearing 
no cheerful sound save the gurgling of 
the Danube when a storm came, or an oc- 
casional shout from a passing boatman. 
The rocks rise in the wildest fashion on 
every side, and the brilliant southern sun 
beats fiercely upon their peaks of por- 
phyry and limestone. 

Raab is a town which merits attention, 
and, turning aside from the high road of 
travel, the visitor may speedily reach it 
by a fascinating route. It was there that 
Francis Joseph gave evidence of his thor- 
ough pluck during the siege in 1849, when 
he signified his determination to lead the 
assault on the insurgents in Raab in per- 
son. It was with difficulty that General 
Schlick dissuaded the emperor from the 
hazardous adventure. Raab has a hand- 
some twelfth-century cathedral, and the 
guides also show strangers some horrible 
dungeons into which the Turks, when 
they were there, used to throw their 
prisoners. 

Gran is one of the most ancient towns 
in Hungary. The Hungarians call it 
Esztergom, and a hundred ballads sing 
its praises. Its cathedral has a huge 
dome, which the pious folk of the lo- 
cality are fond of likening to that of St. 
Peter's at Rome ; and one can scarcely 
summon up courage to undeceive them. 
An altarpiece in the cathedral represents 
the baptism of St. Stephen, the first Chris- 
tian king of Hungary and founder of the 
bishopric at Gran nearly nine centuries 
ago. The Turks have left their marks 
on the sacred edifices here. It provokes 
a smile to wander through Hungary, not- 



250 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



ing this evidence of Turkish barbarism 
and rage, and at the same time hearing 
everywhere from Hungarian lips most 
enthusiastic praise of the invading Mus- 
sulman. 

From Pesth to Presburg the journey 



up the Danube by river or by the rail- 
road, which keeps close to the stream's 
bank, is charming. The mountains are 
with you, grave, majestic : from Pres- 
burg the view of the far-away chain of 
hills is ravishing. You are in a land of 




WOMEN GARDENING IN THE ENVIRONS OF PESTH. 



sunshine and song, where blood runs 
quickly, yet is so hot that it almost burns 
the veins ; where faces are swart and 
limbs are round and eyes sparkle ; where 
the vines in the lusty autumn are load- 
ed with millions of clusters of exquisite 



grapes ; where the plains are rich in a 
hundred colors ; where legend has con- 
secrated every stone ; where men talk 
in heroic terms, and every fellow, even 
though he be but a sorry one, may boast 
of the glorious deeds of his ancestors. 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



251 



This is the land of Strauss's "Danube :" 
this is the country whence comes the 
bewitching, maddening music which has 
affected us all. Here the venerable towns, 
half hidden under moss and vines, seem 
to protest against the tooting horn of the 
railway-porter and the shriek of the loco- 
motive : they appear to frown upon the 
present, or to pray it to pass them by as 
gently and with as little ostentation as 
possible. Here and there, however, the 
present has given an added interest to 
the glories of the past, as at Komorn — 
ancient Komorn — at the junction of the 
Waag with the Danube. Under Matthias 
Corvinus the fortifications of Komorn 
sprang into existence, and they were, 
even in his day, one of the glories of 
Hungary. At the beginning of this 
century they were immensely enlarged 
and strengthened, and the Austrians lit- 
tle dreamed that they would be used to 
sustain an Hungarian army against Aus- 
trians during the bloody and perturbed 
hours of 1849. Komorn made a success- 
ful defence at that time, and might per- 
haps do so again. If the noble Magyars 
should have no other means of defeating 
an Austrian army in any future compli- 
cations, they could send out to the be- 
siegers a few wagon-loads of the potent 
wine of Neszmely, which grows on the 
hills near by, and that would have the 
desired effect. Your Austrian cannot 
drink wine moderately, as your delicate 
Southern Hungarian does : he must guz- 
zle it in large quantities, and the effect is 
disastrous to his sobriety. 

On many a peak of mountain or slope 
of hill one sees rich abbeys surrounded 
by carefully-tilled lands, and also great 
castles, reminding one that the feudal 
epoch has not yet entirely passed away 
in Hungary, The friar and the master 
of the manor are still important figures 
there. The servile peasant does not real- 
ize his condition here, although in some 
sections of the country he has begun to 
think. But he is not oppressed. If it 
were not for the spectre of military ser- 
vice, he might with justice consider his 
lot enviable by comparison with that of 
the peasantry in certain lands less fa- 
vored by Nature than his own. He 



is devout, and would not like to see 
the clergy or nobility deprived of their 
privileges, no matter how they obtain- 
ed them. I do not mean to have it 
understood that landlords have legally 
any of the old-fashioned feudal control 
over their tenants. The legislation of 
1848 abolished all droits du seignetir, 
which had already lasted longer in Hun- 
gary than in most European countries ; 
and the "lords of the soil" were indem- 
nified for any losses which they might 
incur, by funds taken from the state rev- 
enues. But there has never been any 
such great and general redistribution of 
land in Hungary as came in France after 
the great Revolution, and as must some 
day come in England. The lawmakers 
of 1848 hoped for more radical results 
than have been achieved. The peasant 
has not made the best use of his oppor- 
tunities. Small farmers are still the ex- 
ception, and one sees the vast estates 
tilled by a humble tenantry that seems" 
curiously unconscious of its emancipa- 
tion. The Slavs and the two miUions 
of Roumanians in Hungary are jealous 
of their rights, but the peasant born on 
the soil does not share their jealousy. 
He sows his summer and winter wheat, 
his grass-seed and his tobacco, content- 
edly ; cultivates the vine ; tends the hive 
of the industrious bee ; raises cattle and 
horses ; toils in the forest right manful- 
ly, and accepts the wages dictated. His 
policy is that of his employer and of his 
village priest. 

The train which brings one to Pres- 
burg whirls along the edges of steep 
banks which are crowded with fat vine- 
yards. In autumn the spectacle is amaz- 
ing. As far as the eye can reach in ev- 
ery direction except the site of the town 
a sea of vines salutes the view. Pres- 
burg people are fond of their own wines, 
as the traveller speedily discovers by a 
short sojourn among them. They talk 
as glibly of the virtues of some special 
vintage as of the proud days when the 
Hungarian monarchs came to be crown- 
ed in the town. The ancient capital has 
a somewhat neglected air: the citadel, 
on an imposing hill, is partially ruined, 
and the royal palace, which looked down 



252 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



on the Danube from a high plateau, was 
burned about fifty years ago. This pal- 
ace was in a beautiful spot. Climbing 
up through the crooked and ill-smelling 
Judengasse, and passing under a mas- 
sive gateway, one gets from various van- 
tage-grounds among the ruins a superb 
outlook over, the fertile plains and the 
old city lying calm and silent at one's 
feet ; over the villages scattered along 
the slopes of the Little Carpathians ; and 
over many a rustic merrymaking in plea- 
sant grove or inn-yard, for the Hunga- 
rians have as many fete - days as the 
French, and make quite as liberal use 
of them. It is a trial to one's nerves to 
wander through the Judengasse, for the 
amiable Hebrew of the lower classes 
seems determined in Presburg, as in 
many other cities in the dual empire, 
to pay as little attention as possible to 
cleanliness in his dwelling. Sunshine 
does not penetrate his haunts : it makes 
one shudder to peer into the black holes 
in which he lives, and then to gaze up 
out of the vile lane at the luminous sky, 
and to remember the vineyards, the riv- 
er, the orchards, the perfumed thickets, 
from which the children of Abraham 
seem voluntarily to have shut them- 
selves out. 

Presburg is not far from Vienna, and 
the cookery at one of its inns is so re- 
nowned that hundreds of excursions 
yearly go out from the Austrian cap- 
ital to- dine on pheasants and to drink 
the ruddy wine in the old town. Then 
the lanes and the pleasant roads by the 
riverside resound with the uproarious 
merriment of the Austrian who has dined 
well, and some of the graver of the in- 
habitants sneer at his antics, for they do 
not like him, even when he is sober. Two 
American friends informed me that, hav- 
ing once sent a telegraphic order from 
Vienna for a dinner at the inn in Pres- 
burg — kept by a landlord rejoicing in the 
classic name of Paluygay — they found 
such a gorgeous repast awaiting them 
that they began to feel some misgivings 
about the size of the bill. But when it 
was brought they were agreeably sur- 
prised to discover that it amounted to 
but six guldens, or a dollar and a half 



apiece I Pheasant and white wines would 
have cost a trifle more than that in Amer- 
ica, England or France. 




The sights of Presburg are not nu- 
merous. There is a beautiful Gothic 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



253 



church over which various, architects 
toiled for four hundred years. Therein 
the kings were crowned ; and not far 
from the river was the Kronungshugel, 
like that now in Pesth — the mound of 
earth whence the king brandished his 
sword against the four quarters of the 
globe, menacing all humankind with 
destruction if it dared to scowl at Hun- 
gary. The museums, the old seat of the 
imperial diets, the lines of the bulwarks, 
now converted into handsome prome- 
nades, arrest the attention for a day or 
two only. There is many a finely-wood- 
ed hill in the neighborhood dotted with 
monasteries, some of which are in ruins, 
others still prosperous and tenanted ; 
and he who understands Hungarian 
may amuse himself well by wandering 
among the rustics and the monks. The 
peasantry is hospitable in the highest 
degree, and extremely civil, and the lo- 
cal authorities are the same, if they do 
not take it into their heads to fancy that 
you are a Russian spy. 

Theben, on the left bank of the Dan- 
ube, above Presburg, is very striking 
in appearance. The Hungarians often 
speak of it as the gateway to their king- 
dom. It is at the point where the Mora- 
va River, which forms a kind of natural 
boundary between Austria and Hungary, 
empties into the Danube, and there once 
stood a fortified work near the junction 
of the streams, but the French destroy- 
ed it in 1809. The castle, of wild and 
straggling architecture, still exists. Who 
knows what sanguinary battles may not 
yet be fought near Theben ? History, it 
is said, repeats itself, but the present 
Habsburg dynasty doubtless disbelieves 
that it will do so in the case of Theben. 
The journey to Vienna by boat is far 
preferable to that by rail from Pres- 
burg, for on the river one has a chance 
to observe the famous "Hat Hill," near 
the church of St. John, at Deutsch Alten- 
berg. This hat hill is a mound sixty feet 
high, constructed, it is said, with hatsful 
of earth which the worthy burghers con- 
tributed to celebrate their joy at the ex- 
pulsion of the Turks. The boat also 
passes near Lobau Island, and one can 
see the villages of Aspern, Essling and 



Wagram, after the last two of which the 
French, when they were flushed with vic- 
tory, named two of the elegant avenues 
of new Paris, without even taking the 
trouble to consult the Austrians' feelings 
on the subject. Near Lobau the Danube 
flows swiftly, and its current is rough and 
boisterous. It seems hastening away from 
the scene of national humiliation to more 
smiling and peaceful scenes below. Na- 
poleon I. once had his head-quarters on 
the low, narrow wooded islet, and for 
four days sent forth those terrible orders 
which resulted in frightful carnage at the 
battle of Wagram and in the signing of 
peace by the Austrians shortly afterward. 
There are still some traces of fortifica- 
tions on the Lobau, and every year 
thousands of curious visitors go to see 
them and to trace the battle-ground ac- 
cording to the legends of the oldest in- 
habitants. It is needless to say that in 
the immediate vicinity of Essling and 
Wagram the French visitor is not looked 
upon with friendly eyes, although through- 
out Austria generally Frenchmen receive 
plenty of that sympathy which springs 
from the common hatred that two un- 
fortunate nations feel for successful Prus- 
sia and her victorious armies. 

The largest Danube steamers — those 
which descend as far as Galatz and the 
Black Sea — do not go nearer Vienna 
than a point just above Lobau Island. 
Travellers are brought up in small and 
swiftly - running steamboats under the 
great bridges into the "Danube Canal," 
and are allowed to disembark only a 
few minutes' ride from the heart of the 
" Kaiserstadt," as the Austrians fondly 
like to call their beautiful capital. 

Vienna is a city of delights, and one 
never regrets a sojourn in it; but this 
does not appear at first sight to the new- 
comer. The older portions of the town 
have a stern and almost forbidding as- 
pect. There are great numbers of nar- 
row streets, mysterious passage-ways, 
which bring you face to face with low, 
sombre buildings, black with age, and 
so dreary that you fancy them prisons. 
The iron bars or gratings at all the 
windows of the lower stories do not aid 
in dispelling this illusion. Just as you 



254 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



are beginning to fancy that you must 
retire and seek out a new route, you see 
a road leading under an arch or beneath 



a house, and, boldly pushing forward, 
find yourself perhaps in a main avenue, 
perhaps in a public square, or possibly 




in a new labyrinth. Surprises await you 
on every hand. The Prater - Strasse, 
wide, well paved, with horse -railroads 
traversing it in all directions, and with 



houses of brick or brovvnstone or im- 
mense stuccoed mansions, reminds you 
of the better portions of Fourth or Sixth 
avenue in New York. A glimpse of the 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



255 



magnificent " Ring," as the circular street 
running around the whole of the old city is 
called, is a forcible reminder of the Paris 
boulevards. A peep into the Judengasse 
recalls to you the slums of Frankfort-on- 
the-Main, as well as those of Pesth. The 
Graben, a smart promenade in a central 
section, gives you a queer sensation of 
being on the border-line of the Orient, 
because of the odd statues which adorn 
it — statues such as one sees in smaller 
towns near the frontier of Turkey- in-Eu- 
rope. The splendor of a goodly num- 
ber of the principal edifices astonishes 
you : here is new Europe springing into 
life close beside the old and decaying 
Europe. Vienna is so rich in exterior 
sights, the out-of-door life is so abun- 
dant and variegated, there is such a 
never - ending procession of interesting 
figures in every street and alley, that 
you speedily become fascinated, although 
your first walk of an hour or two disap- 
pointed and, mayhap, vexed you. If you 
arrive in autumn, you are almost certain 
of finding a cold wind abroad to worry 
you, and to explain why it is that so many 
of the cafes and beer-houses have double 
windows, and why such a small number 
of people sit out of doors. It may be re- 
marked here that the Austrians, and es- 
pecially the Viennese, share the German 
prejudice against fresh air, and exclude 
it whenever and wherever they can. To 
throw open a window in a horse-car or 
in a public room, even oh a moderately 
warm day, would be to encounter a cer- 
tain torrent of reproaches. The Grand 
Opera-house is the only properly venti- 
lated building in Vienna. In summer 
and in the early autumn thousands of 
people dine and sup daily in. the open 
air, but the moment that there is a sus- 
picion of rawness in the breeze they fly 
to close rooms. 

I left the huge building which serves 
as an office for the Danube Steamboat 
Company one summer evening just as 
the swarms of workers were beginning 
to leave their shops and get home to 
their suppers, and wandered carelessly 
until I came to the venerable cathedral 
known as St. Stephen's. In the infor- 
mation-office of the steamboat company 



I had had an excellent opportunity to 
judge of the cosmopolitan nature of the 
populations. Each notice was printed 
in Polish, Slavic, German, Servian and 
Italian. The dialects of the Slavic lan- 
guage are so essentially different from 
each other that several versions in this 
lively tongue were printed and affixed 
to the wall. Interpreters stood ready at 
hand in the cabinet of the chief business- 
man. I fancied that the odd mixture of 
peoples which I saw there was observa- 
ble only in the currents of travel, and 
that I should find Vienna solidly Ger- 
man in appearance. Nothing of the sort ; 
and that which was still more striking was 
that the Vienna speech did not seem at 
all like the harsh and guttural language 
of Northern Germany, where German 
only was spoken. I strolled along the 
bank of the Danube Canal, whose cur- 
rent flowed impetuously past low and 
ancient -looking houses, gray in color, 
on one bank, and on the other past the 
splendid edifices which ornament the 
new " Ring." Fences separate the bank 
of the canal from the streets, and on 
the sloping green sward there was a 
motley gathering. The humble folk from 
the back streets had come out to repose 
there and to watch the current, danger- 
ously near which any number of small 
bald-headed babies were playing. The 
mothers, stretched at full length on the 
grass, gossiped in loud, shrill voices, and 
seemed to take no heed for their darlings. 
Great hulking men sat here and there, 
smoking pipes and eating bits of bread 
and meat alternately. Your true Vien- 
nese of the lower order cannot refrain 
from smoking for a long time : he 
grudges the moments of sleep, for they 
deprive him of his favorite pipe. A few 
of the loungers on the canal's shores 
were evidently regular visitors there for 
professional purposes. Among them was 
a very old woman with purple face and 
bulbous eyes, whose livelihood was la- 
boriously gained by washing poodles and 
shearing them. The spectacle of this 
old creature plunging the cringing and 
whining animals into the water, then 
drawing them out and scrubbing them 
with a coarse towel, was comical in the 



256 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



extreme. Another "professional" was 
the toy-seller, a bushy-haired youth in a 
leathern j erkin and very dilapidated hose, 
with a frowzy fur cap placed on his locks 
and a basket filled with cheap wooden 
toys on one arm. A few commissionaires 
in red caps were beating carpets in a lazy 
" way under an arch of one of the bridges. 
A little group of vagabonds, dirty and dis- 
consolate, was crouched not far from this 



bridge, and seemed to shrink into the 
shade whenever the imperious police- 
man, with his hand on his broad sabre, 
stalked near them. 

Crossing the Ring-Strasse — of which 
more anon — I plunged into the side 
streets, and speedily found myself con- 
fronted by a huge flight of steps lead- 
ing up among houses which appeared 
to have been on a prolonged drinking 




THE "GRABEN. 



bout, and were tipsily endeavoring to 
keep their equilibrium. Serving-maids, 
with hats set upon the extreme verge 
of topknots of straw-colored hair, and 
wearing red gowns, dark gaiters and 
yellow basques, tripped down by me, 
impudently grinning as they passed. 
Gretchen, Netti and Katti are fond of 
a joke, especially if it be at the expense 
of a stranger. I would I could speak 
well of their taste in dress, but I can- 
not. Candor compels me to state, how- 
ever, that among these toiling women 
of the people there are some wonderful 
types of beauty. Are the most beauti- 



ful German, Slavic or Hungarian ? I 
know not. They are all witty, light- 
headed, ignorant, and the real Vien- 
na serving - girl thinks that the world 
is bounded by the Kahlenberg, a high 
mountain-peak which looks down upon 
the lofty tower of St. Stephen's. Their 
merry laughter is heard in every street, 
and they always seem to be going some- 
where in great haste, much to the delight 
of soldiers and loungers in general. 

Once at the top of the stairs, 1 found 
my way without much difficulty to the 
cathedral. I passed through many an 
ill -smelling alley, and was not a little 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



257 



amazed at the absence of the animation 
usual in a large city. In some of the sun- 
less and dreary avenues not a soul was 
to be seen, unless, perchance, a fluffy 
face emerged from a beer - cellar : in 
others people sat silently — looking, as I 
chose to fancy, rather morose — in their 
shops. Had I gone back to the canal 
or into any of the principal parks, as it 
happened to be a very warm and sun- 
shiny day, I should have found the peo- 
ple whom I looked for in vain in their 
homes. Presently I came to the dark 
and gloomy avenue monopolized by the 
sons of Abraham, who sell old and new 
clothes and clocks, watches, bones and 
rubbish. It had the appearance of a 
miniature exchange. The Jews, nearly 
all dressed in extravagantly long coats 
which came down to their heels, and in 
flat caps which only set off to great ad- 
vantage the ugliness of their faces, and 
their abundant hair combed in front of 
their ears in uncouth fashion, were chaff- 
ering with each other, and now and then 
their voices rose into that pleading shriek 
which signifies that the Hebrew has said 
his last word in a bargain. As I came 
in they all looked at me as if I were an 
intruder, and one of them, laying a skin- 
ny hand upon my arm, endeavored to 
arrest my course as well as my atten- 
tion. Anxious to see the interior of his 
shop, I pretended to be persuaded, and 
looked in among the extraordinary speci- 
mens of cheap clothing which garnished 
the doorway. The stench of stale sewage, 
of beer and food, was revolting. I doubt 
if a ray of health-giving sun or a breath 
of anything like pure air had been known 
in that infected avenue for fifty years. 
All the men were frightfully dirty, but 
seemed sweetly unconscious of their de- 
graded appearance. It is in the morning 
that the Jews congregate most numerous- 
ly in front of their houses for the purposes 
of traffic, and I came after the business of 
the day was over. Still, I have a most 
lively recollection of the manner in 
which I was tormented to purchase ar- 
ticles to which I would have given house- 
room on no condition whatsoever. I sup- 
pose that dozens of the wretched-looking 
objects whom I passed were millionaires, 
17 



but they seemed fit for a chorus to the 
Beggars' Opera. All is grist that comes 
to their mill : it may be a brass watch, 
or a servant's livery, or a silk dress, or 
clothes stripped from a drowned per- 
son : they buy for little and sell for a 
great deal. They are harmless creatures, 
but I defy any stranger to find himself 
suddenly surrounded by them, to gaze 
upon their haggard and unwashed and 
unshaven faces, and to feel them ner- 
vously pulling him this way and that, 
without for a few moments experiencing 
strange misgivings which he is afterward 
at a loss to account for to himself. And 
it is but a step from such forbidding 
places as this to the brightness, the 
cheerful elegance, of some principal 
street, where never an unkempt Jew 
shows his face ! Heaven bless the He- 
brews ! They are, after all, the most 
influential folk in Vienna, and it is no 
discredit to them that a certain number 
of their race will not wash their faces 
and have a resistless passion for dealing 
in rubbish. The Jews own the finest pal- 
aces in Vienna ; they manage and dictate 
the policy of the Vienna press ; they con- 
trol the Viennese banking business ; and 
they could crumple up in a day, if they 
were not too kind and considerate to do 
so, two-thirds of the members of the Aus- 
trian, Hungarian and Galician nobility, 
who in society pretend to be infinitely 
their superiors. As for the Jews en- 
gaged in high finance and in the lib- 
eral professions, they are as dandyish 
as their brethren of the lower classes 
are negligent. Paris and London tai- 
lors have nothing which is too good or 
too costly for them. The Hebrew who 
now and then confiscates the goods 
and chattels of some wealthy Christian 
must feel a grim satisfaction when he 
remembers that up to 1856 his race had 
almost no privileges in Vienna, and that 
in 1849 no Jew could remain in the city 
over night without a passport, which he 
was obliged to have renewed every fif- 
teen days. Four hundred and fifty years 
ago five-score Jews were burned alive in 
the Austrian capital because the rumor 
ran that some son of Israel had pur- 
chased a consecrated wafer, and had 



258 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



made use of it in parodying the forms 
of the CathoHc high mass. 

It was refreshing to get out of the Ju- 



dengasse into decent air, and at last 
to find myself before the old cathedral, 
around which the busy life of commei- 




I X 



cial Vienna flowed and roared as a noisy 
stream breaks at the base of a majestic 
rock. St. Stephen's cathedral is entitled 
to the traveller's keenest admiration. 



Legend and history and poetry have 
done their utmost to make it interest- 
ing, and its beautiful proportions at once 
enlist one's sympathies. The Viennese 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



259 



have a positive affection for it, and stop 
in the midst of their morning hurry to 
look lovingly upon it. The old south- 
ern tower of the noble limestone edifice 
dates from 1359, ^'^'^ i*- ^^^ nearly a cen- 
tury before it was completed. From that 
tower the weary Austrians saw the glitter 
of the spears and helmets of the Christian 
army approaching to deliver them from 
the besieging Turks in those dread days 
when the Burg bastion was already in 
the hands of the infidel, and when it 
seemed certain that he would be able 
to pillage the town ; and from the same 
tower, with sinking hearts, Viennese high 
in power watched the progress of the bat- 
tle between French and Austrians at Ess- 
ling when this century was young. The 
thorough restoration which the church 
has undergone in the last fifteen years 
has detracted no whit from its pictur- 
esqueness. The Giant's Door, opened 
only Avhen some great religious festival 
demands the use of every portion of the 
cathedral, is extremely imposing. It is 
not the custom of the Viennese to men- 
tion that the tower has been entirely 
restored ; but such is the fact, as the 
ancient one had become so shaky that 
it had twice undergone very extensive 
repairs. The common people in Aus- 
tria are exceedingly devout, and the 
Protestant traveller feels almost as if 
he were guilty of indelicacy in stalking 
before the rows of worshippers who may 
be found at nearly every hour of day- 
light kneeling at the shrines or thumb- 
ing their prayer-books or loudly respond- 
ing to the intonations of the priests. The 
lovely faces of the adoring women are 
not raised as their shoulders are brush- 
ed by the heretic who has come to spy 
out the wonders of the church. Wheth- 
er or not the religion be more than skin- 
deep, it is certainly apparent to a consid- 
erable degree on the surface. The rich- 
ly-carved choir-stalls, the ornate stained 
glasses of fifteenth-century workmanship, 
the stone which closes the entrance to the 
old vault in which the sovereigns of Aus- 
tria were long buried (the present recep- 
tacle of dead royalty is in the church of 
the Capuchins), the altar representing the 
stoning of Stephen, the Adlerthor and the 



Bischofsthor, the groined vaulting sup- 
ported by eighteen massivepillars, — are 
all worth many hours of careful study. 
So are the beggars, deputies from the 
under-strata of all Austria's nationalities, 
who lay in wait for me — and I dare say 
will for you when you go to Vienna — 
both within and without the sacred edi- 
fice. Old women, importunate as witches, 
heap imprecations in the Wiejier dialect 
upon the luckless wight who does not 
drop a kreutzer- piece into their trem- 
bling hands. 

High up in the tower swings a noble 
and melodious bell called "Josephine," 
cast in the reign of Joseph I., and rung 
for the first time when Charles VI. fas- 
tened the imperial crown upon his brows 
at Frankfort. Black days have come to 
Austria since that time : the house of the 
Habsburgs — noteworthy because it has 
been so full of almost blameless princes 
— has seen bitter humiliation, and pro- 
found discouragement has knocked at 
the doors of the "Burg," as the Vien- 
nese call the monarch's palace. But 
steady toil at reconstruction has' done 
good both to men's spirits and to their 
prospects, and some day Josephine's 
mighty tongue will clamorously an- 
nounce a great victory. The peasants 
in the far-away Styrian Mountains some- 
times stop suddenly in their work, and, 
calling to each other, say, " Do you hear 
Josephine in Vienna ? What can have 
happened ?" The bell is of immense 
power. An ingenious fire-alarm is also 
managed from the belfry in which Jo- 
sephine is housed. St. Stephen's is so 
central that the numbers of the streets 
are reckoned from it. 

From the venerable church it is but 
a short walk through handsome streets 
lined with fine business-blocks, the lower 
stories of which are devoted to attractive 
shops, to the Graben, the broad but not 
long avenue which the eye hails grateful- 
ly after resting on narrow lanes on many 
sides of it. The most bewildering effect 
is produced on the visitor by constantly 
stepping from brilliant thoroughfares into 
mean and unattractive ones. The ar- 
cades which branch out from the Graben 
are much finer than the "passages" of 



26o 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



Paris. It is astonishing that they have 
not been adopted in our American cities, 
where the extreme heat in summer and 
the cold and snow in winter render them 
very desirable. The Graben — which de- 
rives its name from the fact that it is on 
the site of the moat of the old fortifica- 
tions existing in the twelfth century — is a 
dangerous place for people with slender 
purses, for in the windows are displayed 
all the tempting specialties of Vienna, such 
as delicious Russia leather goods, orna- 
mental bindings for books and albums, 
bronzes and bijouterie, photographs — for 
which the Viennese artists seem to pos- 
sess especial talent — and carvings from 
the Tyrol and from the Styrian Alps. 
There are no striking architectural fea- 
tures in the famous avenue ; the red- 
nosed hackmen group around a pecu- 
liar-looking monument erected in 1693 
to commemorate the cessation of the 
plague ; and, in the season, hundreds 
of tall, elegant ladies, equipped in the 
latest Paris fashions, besiege the shops. 
" The season " is an unfortunate moment 
for the stranger who is not rich. In 



autumn and winter every hotel, every 
suitable apartment-house, every palace, 
is occupied by the country nobility, who 
flock in from their estates, where they 
have been economizing for seven months', 
to lead a merry life in the capital for 
the other five. Princes, archdukes and 
counts are as plenty as blackberries in 
an American pasture. The respect for 
title is carried to an exaggerated point in 
Austria unknown even in Great Britain. 
The porter at a grand hotel speaks with 
bated breath of his titled guests. Hat- 
raising, genuflexion and hand -kissing 
salute the nobleman from the moment 
he leaves his bedchamber until he re-. 
turns to it at night. These courtesies 
cost money : each noble lord is severely 
fleeced by his retainers, by shopkeepers 
and by hotel-men ; and before he leaves for 
home he is frequently compelled to call 
upon some Hebrew friend for a tremen- 
dous loan. Vienna is a very expensive 
capital : it is safe to say that fifty cents 
there will not buy more than twenty in 
Paris. 



CONCLUDING PART. 



TH E Ring - Strasse was a happy 
thought. Vienna would have been 
but a second-rate capital without it. But 
it was a terribly expensive conception, 
and Austrian finances could not stand 
the strain which it placed upon them. 
To-day the project is incomplete, but it 
is splendid, even in its unfinished condi- 
tion. When all the great edifices, which 
now look melancholy and forlorn sur- 
rounded with ugly palings and scaffold- 
ings, are complete, Paris must look to 
her laurels. The Viennese is proud of 
his "Ring," and as soon as his business 
is done he hastens from his dingy office 
in an ancient and unsavory street to prom- 
enade in the immensely broad avenues or 
to view other promenaders from behind 
the windows of a cafe or restauration. 

Until the early years of this century 
Vienna possessed a double line of for- 
tifications. She did not propose to be 
again caught napping by the Turks. In 
1704 the exterior line was built to pro- 



tect the city against Rakoczy's Hunga- 
rians, who were exceedingly troublesome. 
This still exists, but the city has gone be- 
yond it, and the traveller is not a little sur- 
prised to find himself confronted by the 
guard whose task it is to levy duty upon 
passengers and freight coming in to town 
when he thinks that he is in the very 
centre of the capital. After 1858 the in- 
ner fortifications, which were gradually 
crumbling into unsightly ruins, were 
mainly removed, although some of the 
massive walls may still be seen, and the 
new Ring-Strasse was built on the site of 
the old rampart and fosse. The builders 
were mindful of coming generations, and 
laid out the avenue on such an ample 
scale that the present population cannot 
fill it. Even on fete-days it has a sub- 
urban air. But a century hence the wis- 
dom of the plans will be apparent. 

Starting from the new and magnificent 
Exchange, in front of which crowds are al- 
ways pressing as tumultuously as is pos- 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



261 



sible for people who are not especially 
excitable, a walk around the Ring is ex- 
ceedingly impressive. The Exchange is 
a rather sad-colored structure, with a su- 
perb portico. The interior is finer than 
* that of any other Exchange in Europe. 
The public cannot view it from conve- 
nient galleries, as it can those of Paris 
and London : the speculators who fre- 
quent it even pay an annual subscrip- 
tion for their entries. Each business- 
man of importance has a small room 
opening on one of the three grand naves 
of the central hall. There he receives his 
visitors and makes his sales. Clouds of 
smoke rise up to the stately ceiling, and 
from the corridors below come odors of 
invigorating beer. In the basement the 
flour exchange is located, besides a co- 
lossal restaurant, where much of the prin- 
cipal business of Vienna is done between 
the discussion of two bocks. After the ter- 
rible crisis of 1873 there were some stormy 
scenes outside this Exchange. Several 
prominent financiers were brutally beat- 
en, and the government was compelled 
to send troops to restore order. Now the 
men who were then doing business by 
millions are contented with the safer 
game of hundreds, and are every way 
more rational than during the days of 
inflation. 

Not far from the Exchange, and on a 
side street, is the new telegraph-office, 
which is, as a recent writer has express- 
ed it, " a finer palace than that of the em- 
peror." The telegraph service in Austria 
is admirable and cheap, and apparently 
restricted by no more formalities since 
the epoch of liberalism arrived than in 
America. A porter, imposing in costly 
uniform, meets you on the steps and di- 
rects you to any office which you may 
designate. Every palace, church and 
establishment of importance, even the 
bank and the wholesale dry-goods house, 
boasts one of these porters, dressed far 
better than a general and of most ex- 
travagant manners. These gentry date 
from the time when Charles VI. intro- 
duced the most extraordinary luxury into 
Vienna, and when it was not uncommon 
for a single nobleman to have a hundred 
servants in his household. 



The Ring is dotted with beautiful struc- 
tures from the Exchange to the Grand 
Opera. The police head-quarters is in- 
stalled in a mammoth hotel built just 
before the crash — an hotel devoid, how- 
ever, of any special architectural fea- 
tures. The days have passed away when 
the police was Austria's principal and 
most formidable organization, and when 
no man's secrets were safe ; but the fa- 
mous body still has great authority. 
The men, in their short jackets and 
navy hats, and with their broad sabres 
dangling at their sides, are prompt and 
efficient, as now and then they need to 
be, for Vienna has a canaille among its 
lower classes as dangerous as that of 
London. Not far from the police-office 
are the Comic Opera, the Hotel de France 
and the unfinished Parliament Palace, 
City Hall and University. Heaven alone 
knows when these latter will be finished. 
The present Chamber of Deputies is a 
temporary structure, insignificant in ap- 
pearance and inconvenient. If these 
great buildings are ever completed, the 
government intends to build near them 
a vast museum, in which the rich col- 
lections of the Belvedere and of the Mu- 
seum of Natural History will be united. 
Near the site selected for this museum 
are the stables of the emperor, in which 
six hundred noble horses are housed ; 
and among the treasures in these sta- 
bles are saddles and rich housings taken 
from the Ottomans whom John Sobieski 
chased from under the walls of Vienna. 
At this point of the Ring the splendors 
of the Austrian capital will culminate, 
unless new wars and financial embar- 
rassments for ever swamp the designs. 
The Votive Church, a memorial of Fran- 
cis Joseph's gratitude to Heaven for his 
escape from assassination in 1853, is, to 
my thinking, the prettiest church in Aus- 
tria. It is a triumph of Gothic art. The 
delicious lightness of its lines, the ethe- 
real colors of its windows, the quaint ef- 
fect produced by its sharply-pitched roof 
ornamented with variegated tilings, — all 
give a pleasurable sensation to eyes long 
offended by heavy and ungracious edi- 
fices. I doubt if there is a single church 
in the United States as beautiful as this 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 




ATUE OF THE EMPEROR FRANCIS I. OF AUSTRIA. 



"votive" shrine, which springs as dain- 
tily and naturally from the ground as 
does a slender and graceful elm. 

There are many lovely gardens in Vi- 
enna, but none more handsome than the 
Hofgarten, which the promenader around 
the Ring finds at his left as he goes on 



toward the Grand Opera. This Hofgar- 
ten, which has in it a statue of Francis 1., 
is the resort of the court, and has for its 
neighbor the humbler but even more 
attractive Volksgarten, where stands 
an imitation of the temple of Theseus at 
Athens, with sculptures by Canova with- 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



263 



in. A new court theatre is springing up 
just north of the Volksgarten. In sum- 
mer and autumn thousands of Vienna 
burghers wander among the flowers here, 
listening to the music furnished by or- 
chestras and bands such as Johann and 
Eduard Strauss know how to assemble, 
(n winter the gardens look uninviting, 
and not even occasional sunshine can 
:empt the burgher and his family to risk 
a promenade in them. In spring, when 
the fountains are plashing, the great 
ranks of flowers sending out their per- 
fumes, the orchestras playing, hundreds 
of children and nursemaids romping and 
laughing, knots of brilliantly -uniformed 
officers promenading arm-in-arm with 
the exquisitely-pretty Viennese girls, the 
Stadtpark and the Volksgarten present a 
spectacle gayer than any to be found in 
more northern capitals. There is more 
spontaneous and natural ebullition of 
merriment, more pleasure in the fact of 
mere existence, than the North will per- 
mit of. Life seems pleasant indeed to 
these large lustrous - eyed Italian beau- 
ties, to the slender and passionate-faced 
Hungarian daughters, to the haughty 
young Slavs, whose loveliness is power- 
ful as a spell over the man of German 
blood. It is on the Ring and in these 
gardens that one discovers that Vienna 
is not a German city in the strict sense 
of the word. German is heard no often- 
er than at least three other languages, 
and Francis Joseph is beloved of all 
classes because he has never endeavor- 
ed to force the diverse national elements 
in his empire into one groove or to make 
one language flourish at the expense of 
another. 

The ladies of Vienna are in some re- 
spects almost as independent as those of 
New York or Philadelphia. They wan- 
der about the streets unattended, on foot, 
morning and afternoon, and feel none of 
the influence of those absurd convention- 
alities which cripple the French and the 
Italians. 

Not far from the Hofgarten, and at- 
tached to the archduke Albert's palace, 
is a matchless gallery of designs and en- 
gravings, founded by that duke Albert 
who was a son of Frederick Augustus, 



king of Poland, elector of Saxony. Here 
are grouped together one hundred and 
forty-seven designs by Rembrandt alone, 
and a vast number of studies by Rubens 
and Van Dyck. Here also are nearly 
four hundred original designs by Al- 
brecht Dijrer, the legacy of the enthu- 
siastic Rodolph II. The artistic riches 
of Vienna may be guessed at from the 
fact that important as is this Albertina 
Collection — as it is called — it is nearly 
equalled by five others, which give an 
admirable idea of the old Dutch, Italian 
and German schools. These five collec- 
tions belong to Prince Liechtenstein and 
to Counts Breunner, Schbnborn, Czer- 
nin and Harrach ; and to these must be 
added that of the Belvedere, renowned 
throughout Europe. The Ambras collec- 
tion in the Belvedere and the Museum of 
Weapons are among the brightest mem- 
ories of American tourists. The " Hall 
of Fame " in the last-named museum is 
a colossal plan badly carried out. The 
scenes from the earlier history of Austria 
in the dome are good, but many of the 
other paintings are decidedly inferior. 
The Academy of Art, founded in 1705, 
likewise has some noteworthy pictures, 
and the emperor has promised to add to 
them, now that the new Academy is in 
order. This institution is in the Schiller 
Platz, and is ornamented with a bronze 
statue of that poet, as well as of many 
other demigods of literature and art. 
The cynical German of the North likes 
to say that there is no culture in Vien- 
na, but this is very far from the truth. 
Goethe, Schiller and Shakespeare are as 
passionately adored in the Austrian cap- 
ital as in Berlin, and the Bard of Avon 
is especially cultivated. 

The "Opern Ring " and points near it 
are among the most interesting in Vi- 
enna, and in summer they are very ani- 
mated until a late hour. But Vienna has 
no such night-life as Paris. By eleven 
o'clock the majority of the streets are 
almost deserted, and the porter who 
opens the door of your house is entitled 
to levy a small fine — ten kreutzers, I 
think — because you disturb him after 
his day's duties are supposed to be over. 
Apartment-houses are the rule, and each 



264 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



house has a vast outer door opening into 
a court, whence the various stairways di- 
verge. There is also a variety of vast 
edifices, each containing hundreds of 
apartments and tenements, which are 
the property of the great ecclesiastical 
foundations and abbeys, and some of 
these are so extensive as to be mistaken 
by strangers for public institutions. The 
Schottenhof, once the property of some 
Scottish Benedictines, who were invited 



to Austria by the first duke in 11 58, and 
the Melkerhof, which belongs to a pic- 
turesque old abbey not far from Vienna, 
are good illustrations of this. Many of 
these caravanseries have passage-ways 
through them, and the ground -floors 
within the courts are occupied by small 
shops. The friendly beggar also en- 
sconces himself in the shelter of a wall, 
and begs of the hundreds of inmates as 
they go out and in, without ever being 




THE BELVEDERE. 



troubled by the police, so far as I could 
discover. 

But let us come back to the Opern Ring. 
Naturally, the most conspicuous object 
upon it is the Grand Opera, whence it 
takes its name. This edifice is by no 
means of 5o fine exterior as that of Pa- 
ris, but as an opera-house is far supe- 
rior. It is long and low, its arcades are 
not very impressive, and the few statues 
which it possesses are not works of ge- 
nius. But in the theatre portion of the 
house it is the ideal of a well-ordered 
structure for musical spectacles. A Swiss 
author, whose stories need to be taken 



with a grain of salt, says that the prin- 
cipal architect of the Opera died of cha- 
grin because of the numerous unfavor- 
able criticisms which his work excited. 
The building was completed only in 1869. 
and still has an atmosphere of newness 
environing it. The fa9ade fronting on 
the Ring-Strasse is so low that when one 
views it from that point one can form no 
adequate idea of the immense size of the 
building. Everything within is arranged 
with the most exquisite order and good 
taste. Enteringthe marble corridor, which 
is nearly level with the street, and from 
which a superb marble staircase ascends 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



265 



to the boxes, one finds that there are plen- 
ty of ticket-offices, so that there need be 
no crowding. A vast and brilhantly-uni- 
formedbeadle, a stupendous creature, evi- 
dently born expressly for the purpose of 
creating mingled admiration and fear in 
just such a place as he occupies, parades 
to and fro, striking the marbles with his 
brass-pointed staff. He is "one having 
authority," and when there is any ne- 
cessity for orders he gives them freely 
to a staff of more soberly dressed offi- 
cials. Cloak-rooms abound ; the ushers 
are civil to a degree unknown elsewhere ; 
and, ushered into an audience-room which 
contains three thousand people, and from 
each section of which every part of the 
stage can be distinctly seen, one realizes 
for the first time in his life the real so- 
lemnity of theatre-going. To the orches- 
tra-seats ladies and their cavaliers enter 
in the same dignified way that they would 
go into a fashionable church. They feel 
that they have come to be moved and in- 
spired by art : the opera is an institution 
which they are proud to sustain, and at 
which they are delighted to be seen twice 
or thrice weekly. There are habitues who 
never miss a night during the whole long 
season. Among them I remember well 
an aged officer who always arrives just 
as the curtain is about to rise, settles slow- 
ly and painfully into his seat, and then 
devotes himself until the close to every 
detail with the most painstaking atten- 
tion. The beautiful hall is so thorough- 
ly and perfectly ventilated that one nev- 
er experiences the slightest discomfort. 
Employes can at any moment, by touch- 
ing electric bells, procure you a current 
of warm or of cool air. The ventilating 
machinery in the capacious cellars is so 
complicated as to seem magical. The 
whole building is lighted at once by an 
electric apparatus, and all the colossal 
scenes on the stage are moved up, down 
or away by steam. So fine is the organi- 
zation in this latter department that twelve 
men manage the whole business of scene- 
shifting and produce effects which are 
marvellous. I have never seen anything 
to surpass the metamorphosis in the first 
act of Tannhdtiser. In the twinkling of 
an eye the vast grotto in which the knight 



has been spellbound by the lurid lady 
and her attendants — a grotto filled with 
cascades, with cool recesses crowded with 
shells and translucent waves, with fan- 
tastic retreats in which sea- monsters are 
basking — fades away and leaves Tann- 
hauser trembling at the foot of a rocky 
hill, on which stands a lofty abbey. The 
beams of dawn are faintly touching the 
towers, and the leaves of the trees are 
tremulous in the morning breeze. To 
the left, on a moss-grown rock, one sees 
a shepherd lad playing upon a rustic pipe 
a bewitchingly pastoral air. A hunting- 
horn is heard : a party of huntsmen ad- 
vance, and Tannhauser awakes from his 
dream. This is poetry sublimated, and 
reconciles one with Wagner. Mean- 
time, the grand orchestra of one hun- 
dred and fifty musicians unrivalled in 
Europe interprets the unspeakable and 
especially unsingable things which Mas- 
ter Wagner evolves from his soul. A'ida, 
as given at this Opera, is a touching, ten- 
der, inexpressibly lovely poem from first 
to last. From the moment that it begins 
until it ends the seer and hearer is trans- 
ported into ancient Egypt, and his senses 
are intoxicated by a wealth of artistic de- 
tail which is unrivalled elsewhere. Frau 
Materna, as Zelika in L 'Afncaine, court- 
ing death beneath the poisonous man- 
zanilla tree, while the orchestra inter- 
prets the splendid symphony on which 
Meyerbeer bestowed genius enough to 
make half a dozen composers immortal, 
can never be forgotten by those who 
have seen her. She appears to less ad- 
vantage in some of the roles in Wag- 
ner's mythical operas, where the action 
passes in the clouds, and where she is 
condemned to wear an ill-looking hel- 
met and to unloose her locks. Seven 
hundred persons are employed by the 
administration of the Opera, and the 
institution has its own establishment for 
making properties and costumes. Shams 
are despised, and dresses are made of 
rich materials. The arsenals and muse- 
ums of the state are drawn upon when- 
ever they can be of service in the pro- 
duction of an opera. Herr Richter, who 
conducted the orchestra which interpret- 
ed Wagner's works at Bayreuth, holds 



266 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



the baton at the Vienna Opera, and de- 
votes himself with the greatest earnest- 
ness to popularizing the master in the 



Austrian capital. I confess that not 
even the luxurious appointments of the 
stage nor the exalted character of the 




orchestration succeeded in convincing 
me that The Valkyrior was sufficiently- 
dramatic to be interesting as an opera ; 
but the manner in which mechanical 



skill had overcome the difficulties which 
I had supposed to prevent representation 
of supernatural things was quite stupefy- 
ing. The chorus and the ballet are as 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



267 



admirable as. every other essential fea- 
ture of the performances is. Ballets, as 
given in Vienna, are worth travelling 
hundreds of miles to see. They are fre- 
quently in two or three acts and last for 
an hour or two, and villages, forests, 
armies and troops of beautiful women 
pass before the vision like phantasms 
in a dream. Cappelia is the name of 
a ballet first produced in Paris. When 
it was taken to Vienna it was so much 
improved and amplified as to be scarce- 
ly recognizable. The fact that ballets 
are given as separate pieces at the 
Grand Opera does not hinder the ad- 
ministration from embodying them in 
the musical works also. Nothing can 
exceed in idyllic beauty the scene in the 
temple where the priestesses of the Sun 
are performing their sacred rites, while 
Ai'da and her lover are dying suffocated 
in the vault below. The Viennese have 
made this the ne plus ultra of dramatic 
contrast. 

The director of the Opera is an am- 
bitious man. He does everything thor- 
oughly, and is so anxious to have it done 
better than elsewhere that he rehearsed 
Wagner's Valkyrior one hundred times 
before he allowed it to be presented to 
the public. Not very long ago one of 
Mendelssohn's symphonies was "set to 
scenery" and produced on this stage. 
There is a yearly season of Italian opera 
alternated with the regular German reper- 
toire from March until May. It is then 
that such stars as Nilsson, Patti and Luc- 
ca appear. The Viennese are very faith- 
ful in their affection for their own stock 
•company, which is exceptionally rich in 
good voices. Certainly, excellent sing- 
ing may be expected in an opera which 
receives a large subsidy from the state, and 
which pays its first tenor twelve thousand 
florins for nine months' service. The Vi- 
enna people are, curiously enough, more 
interested in Wagner than the Prussians 
are. The court has, I fancy, contributed 
somewhat toward the enthusiasm of the 
Austrians for a composer who is the espe- 
cial pet of Francis Joseph's son-in-law, 
young Louis of Bavaria. 

The imperial family has its " box at the 
opera," a huge, richly -blazoned loge in 



the middle of the dress-circle, and some- 
times the emperor in uniform may be 
seen there. He evidently comes to the 
music for relaxation and rest, and not 
merely to be seen and to lend glory to 
the occasion. The opera and prome- 
nades in the Prater are about the only 
amusements in which he indulges dur- 
ing "the season." He listens intently, 
and applauds like a connoisseur, not os- 
tentatiously, but discreetly and "in the 
proper places." The emperor has a sad 
face — not bitter nor cynical, but worn 
and weary. It is not strange, for he has 
had trouble enough to kill men of less 
sturdy stock. He is an earnest man, 
anxious for the consolidation of the emi- 
pire-kingdom committed to his keeping. 
It would be difficult to recognize in him 
now the dainty "Prince Charming" who 
danced with the Hungarian beauties 
when he was first made emperor, and 
whose elegance in fashionable life was 
on every one's tongue. Now he is a 
loving husband and father and a sober 
man of hard work — out of bed, summer 
and winter, at five o'clock in the morn- 
ing, and busy in his library while his 
functionaries — even the astute Andrassy 
— are recovering from the fatigues of rout 
and reception in the diplomatic world, 
or ball. He takes coffee early, lights a 
long cigar, and smokes it while reading 
his despatches. About eleven o'clock 
he drinks a glass of beer, and at one he 
dines with his family. The rest of his 
day is spent either in the saddle or in 
the council -chamber. The Habsburg 
family is very devout, and has a great 
many religious duties to perform, which 
consume a good deal of Francis Joseph's 
time. To be emperor of Austria and king 
of Hungary implies being an apostolic as 
well as an imperial majesty. The empe- 
ror and all the members of his family 
are rigid Catholics. On Holy Friday 
Francis Joseph follows, bareheaded and 
humble, behind the archbishop who leads 
the procession, surrounded by swarms of 
priests, who revive the sacerdotal splen- 
dor of the Middle Ages, to and from the 
old cathedral. Austria still allows the 
Catholic street -displays which are for- 
bidden in so many other countries. The 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



State lends all that it possesses of daz- 
zling to dignify the ceremonials of the 
Church. Artillery thunders, trumpets 
sound, heralds advance clad in fantas- 
tic garments. After religious rites have 
been celebrated in the interior of the 
imperial palace, the cortege promenades 
the principal streets. The archbishop 
bears the holy sacrament, round which 
rise clouds of in- 
cense from censers 
swung by the hands 
of acolytes. The 
emperor wears the 
uniform of a gene- 
ral, and is followed 
at a respectful dis- 
tance by his staff 
of marshals and of- 
ficers, the German 
Guard resplendent 
in scarlet and gold, 
and the Hungarians 
in brilliant tunics, 
with leopard -skins 
hanging from their 
shoulders and their 
breasts aglow with 
precious stones. 
The number of 
lackeys, pages, 
court chamber- 
lains, gentlemen of 
the household and 
musicians is only 
exceeded by the 
friars, black, white, 
red, gray, yellow 
and green, who 
spring up on this 
day of days from 
the hundreds of re- 
ligious institutions 
in the neighbor- 
hood of the capital, 

and who vanish as quickly as they came 
when the ceremonies are ended. All 
work is suspended : people who with- 
out exaggeration may be counted by hun- 
dreds of thousands flock from church to 
church and render the streets impassable 
for vehicles. Later in the day the em- 
peror and empress enter the reception- 
room of the palace, and there wash the 



feet of twelve old men, who come clad 
as pilgrims to receive this touching hom- 
age and memorial of humility from the 
hands of their sovereigns. Then the old 
men are seated at table and the emperor 
and empress serve them food and wine. 
When the meal is finished Francis Jo- 
seph hangs about the neck of each ven- 
erable man a little purse filled with gold, 




THE IMPERIAL ARSENAL. 

and proceeds to inquire tenderly about 
his wants and those of his family. This 
scene never fails vividly to recall, as it 
is intended to do, the acts and words of 
Jesus at the Last Supper. There are no 
signs that these processions and obser- 
vances will ever fall into disuse. Hun- 
garians, Slavs, Italians and Southern 
Germans have a profound affection for 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



269 



religious pomp, and the shopkeepers 
would growl were they to be deprived 
of the income which they draw from the 
necessary preparations for these festivals. 
But many of the customs which prevailed 
during the last century are no longer ob- 
served. Then the mystery of the "Pas- 
sion " was represented in the churches; 
Judas was burned in effigy at the door 
of the cathedral ; and a "benediction of 
the wolves " was given in memory of the 
time when wolves used to venture even 
into the streets of Vienna, and when 
their bowlings troubled pious souls who 
were engaged in their devotions. All 
Saints' Day and "the Day of the Dead" 
are observed with the same earnest fidel- 
ity as in Paris and throughout France. 
There is still a large fund of superstition 
among the lower classes in Austria, and 
religious fanaticism is sometimes carried 
to a startling pitch, as in the case of a 
stableman who crucified himself a year 
or two since, and who was found bleed- 
ing slowly to death with a rosary about 
his neck. 

The emperor is able to speak in their 
own language to all his varied subjects, 
and it is not unusual for him to receive 
Slavs, Hungarians, Germans and Poles 
in one morning. He never makes the 
slightest pretensions to unapproachable 
dignity in public, and is as democratic 
as General Grant or President Hayes. 
The entrance to that portion of the pal- 
ace in which he resides is in a vast court- 
yard, through which there is a public 
passage-way, and the humblest cobbler 
or corporal may stand close beside the 
emperor as he comes in or out. He is 
always affectionately saluted by baring 
of the head on the part of men and pro- 
found bows from women. 

The old "Burg," or palace, is a mass of 
buildings of different styles and epochs — 
none of them especially striking — united 
by courts. Once upon a time it was de- 
fended by fortifications, but now the pop- 
ulace could invade it in five minutes. 
Within, there are splendid apartments, 
libraries, collections of armor and hun- 
dreds of costly portraits. In the imperial 
treasury are the famous globe surmount- 
ed by a cross, the sceptre crowned with 



an eagle and the massive crown which 
the Habsburgs have so long worn. The 
crown which the archdukes of Austria 
wore when they went to Frankfort to be 
crowned is also in this treasury : it is in 
fine gold, ornamented with diamonds, 
pearls and rubies, and cost countless 
thousands. The diamond crown worn 
by the empress on state occasions cost 
nearly eight hundred thousand dollars. 
Neither the receptacles of the Vatican 
nor the museums of Dresden contain 
such a miraculous store of riches as is 
shut within the treasury in this sombre 
old Burg. Add to this unrivalled mu- 
seum the imperial library, which con- 
tains three hundred thousand volumes 
and twenty thousand manuscripts, the 
museums of natural history, the cabinets 
of antiquities and precious stones, gal- 
leries devoted to mineralogy, zoology 
and botany, a vast riding-school for the 
use of the ladies and gentlemen of the 
court in winter, and you have some faint 
idea of the diversity of the Burg's interior. 
Passing througli the gallery leading to 
the zoological museum during a visit to 
Vienna some years ago in company with 
an eccentric American friend, a curious 
episode occurred. At a dark point in the 
long corridor we came upon a white-coat- 
ed sentine}, grim, silent, hugging his gun 
as if he fancied that we desired to take 
it from him. This sentinel, if he be still 
alive, has probably never recovered from 
the stupefaction into which he was thrown 
by what then and there occurred. My 
friend walked up to him, and with a 
quick motion of his hand turned the sol- 
dier round as if he had been a wooden 
manikin swinging on a pivot. When 
he had thus taken a good look at him 
he apostrophized him as follows : "You 
must get awful tired of this standing 
about ; and it is a dreadful poor busi- 
ness for a big, handsome fellow like 
you. When you get through, you'd bet- 
ter emigrate to Ameriky. Never heard 
of Ameriky, mebbe. Well, never mind : 
you jest take my advice and go to Amer- 
iky." Then he turned the sentinel round 
once more, gave him a playful dig in the 
ribs with his fore finger, and moved on. 
What the sentinel thought it is impos 



270 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 




CHARLES CHURCH. 



sible to imagine. Perhaps he was afraid 
to resent it, for fear that it might be some 
imperial joke. If my friend had ventured 
thus cavaherly to treat a Prussian senti- 
nel, he would infallibly have been skew- 
ered with a bayonet. 

Near by is the tomb — as here, in the 



Burg is the cradle— of the Habsburgs. 
A subterranean alley unites the imperial 
palace to the church of the Augustines, 
where the members of the family are in 
these later times buried, or, rather, where 
their hearts are preserved in funereal 
urns. There is the magnificent tomb 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



271 



which Maria Theresa's daughter erect- 
ed to her husband, Duke Albert : Cano- 
va's richest marbles are lavished on this 
monument. The tombs of the emperor 
Leopold II. and of the great marshal and 
general Daum are also in this church. 
But the powerful emperors of the elder 
days sleep in the church of the Capu- 
chins, in the centre of the city, and 
among them lie Joseph II. and Maxi- 
milian, the two unhappiest in the line 
which rules over infelix Austria. Even 
to this day the good people of Trieste 
and Vienna cannot speak without emo- 
tion in their voices of the gentle prince 
whose life was sacrificed in Mexico to the 
necessities of a cruel situation for which 
he was in no measure responsible. 

Sunday church-going is a prime fea- 
ture of Viennese fashionable life, chiefly 
because of the superb concerts given in 
the principal religious edifices on that 
day. On great festivals like those men- 
tioned above the ladies of aristocratic cir- 
cles frequently sing in the choirs. The 
court chapel, the church of the Augus- 
tines, and those of the Scotch and of 
St. Anne of the Jesuits, are thronged 
with elegant gentlemen and ladies, who 
come to listen in the same enraptured 
manner that they do at the opera, and 
doubtless for the same reason — the grat- 
ification of the aesthetic sense. In the 
Carlskirche, built in the reign of Charles 
VI. to commemorate the cessation of the 
plague, remarkable concerts are also giv- 
en. On each side of the portal of this 
church rises a colossal column nearly 
one hundred and fifty feet in height, the 
effect of which is singularly imposing. 

Opposite the Opera-house stands an 
edifice which serves to illustrate the lux- 
urious habits of modern business-men in 
Vienna. It is a veritable palace, built by 
a brickmaker in which to house himself 
and his fortune. On the upper portion 
of the front are numerous frescoes by 
Rahl on a gold ground. Not far away 
to the right one strays upon the banks 
of the little Wien, the picturesque stream 
which flows in a deep channel through 
the Wieden quarter. There is a polytech- 
nic school in this part of the town which 
has a thousand students, and with it is 



connected a technological museum which 
contains more than sixty thousand spe- 
cimens of manufactures in various stages 
of production. In the Albrechtsgasse, 
and not far from the Opera, is the ele- 
gant new palace of the archduke Albert, 
connected by a covered passage-way with 
an older and less commodious house 
which was the archduke's former resi- 
dence. Of the Albertina Library I have 
already spoken. The Albrechtsbrunnen, 
a fountain adorned with marble statues 
of the principal rivers of the empire, is 
an attractive work, and relieves the eye, 
which becomes a little fatigued by the 
acres of yellowish stuccoed fronts on the 
Ring. Beyond the Opera the broad cir- 
cular thoroughfare is ornamented with 
palatial dwellings, hotels large enough 
for asylums, a commercial academy, the 
elaborate building of the "Society of the 
Friends of Music," the palaces of various 
potentates, several clubs frequented by 
the nobility, and a new academic gym- 
nasium. Here in pleasant afternoons 
Count Andrassy may be seen riding or 
walking with his daughter, a stately Hun- 
garian of the most bewitching type. An- 
drassy is a remarkable figure, and wher- 
ever he goes is well stared at. He has 
come perilously near to the verge of de- 
feat in his policy many times, but has 
held his own with most consummate 
ability, keeping decently in check the 
Magyars, who are inclined to be over- 
reaching, and at the same time content- 
ing, in at least a reasonable degree, jeal- 
ous Slavs and Germans. Andrassy's del- 
icate, spirituel features are aglow with an 
intelligence admirably fitted for diplo- 
matic encounter with able adversaries. 
His wit is like a rapier : it cuts severely 
before one feels the sting. The number 
of his mots on the complex Eastern Ques- 
tion is legion. Bismarck affects to laugh 
at Andrassy and his policy : the mighty 
Prussian chancellor speaks of Austria as 
the "sick woman," just as Turkey's sul- 
tan has long been called the "sick man 
of the East," but in his heart of hearts he 
realizes that the wily Hungarian would be 
a dangerous enemy. Andrassy is precise- 
ly the man for the epoch of "dualism " 
in Austria. 



272 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



This word dualism — so often used to 
express the present period in the history 
of the country — possibly needs a bit of 



explanation. Victor Tissot says that when 
he visited Vienna the situation was ex- 
plained to him by an able Austrian as 




follows: "From 1851 to 1859 'w^ were 
ruled by absolutism ; from 1859 through 
i860, by federalism; from 1861 to 1865, 
by centralism ; and now, for some time 



past, we have dualism. The empire is 
divided into two great groups of states 
— on the west, Cisleithania ; on the east, 
Transleithania, separated by the little riv- 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



273 



er Leytha a few leagues south of Vienna. 
Cisleithania comprises Lower and Upper 
Austria, the duchy of Salzburg, Styria, 
the Tyrol and the Vorarlberg, Carinthia, 
Carniola, the Littoral, Dalmatia, Bohe- 
mia, Moravia, Galicia, and the Buko- 
vina. The deputies of these provinces 
meet in Vienna : the Germans are in 
the majority, and the Tchechs, Slavs and 
Poles complain that they are oppressed. 
Transleithania is composed of three states 
— Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia 
and Esclavonia. The deputies of these 
provinces meet at Pesth, where the Cro- 
atian deputies refuse to go, just as the 
Tchechs refuse to sit in Vienna. The 
two central chambers of Vienna and 
Pesth each elect a superior delegation, 
whose seat is in Vienna, and before 
which the common ministers of Foreign 
Affairs, War and Finance are responsi- 
ble." It is easy to see that there must be 
much trouble in satisfying all these dis- 
cordant elements, and in shaping out 
of them a real Austrian policy. Count 
Andrassy has certainly endeavored, al- 
though he has by no means been negli- 
gent of his countrymen in Hungary, to 
take a broad and national view of mat- 
ters — national in the sense of being in 
some measure representative of all the 
peoples scattered up and down the broad 
land over which the house of Habsburg 
rules. That he has shown large-heart- 
edness in dealing with the condition of 
the unhappy populations that were late- 
ly groaning under the Turkish yoke is 
more astonishing when one considers 
that he is an Hungarian than it would 
be if he were of German blood. The 
emperor has always had full confidence 
in him, even in hours when the Germans 
grumbled loudly against him. He ap- 
pears to be for ever meditating some- 
thing important, and when he rides in 
the Prater people are more anxious to 
see him than to gaze upon the emperor 
or young Rodolph, the prince imperial. 
The Stadt Park, the Kursaal and the 
Blumensaal are resorts in which the beau 
inonde of Vienna loves to show itself, and 
where it comes to worship at the shrine 
of the Strauss brothers winter and sum- 
mer. The Stadt Park on a May morn- 
18 



ing, when hundreds of people are tak- 
ing their coffee under the tfees or in the 
pleasant arcades of the restaurants, is as 
agreeable a spectacle as one could well 
expect to find in a large city. What a 
sharp contrast with the dull, sodden 
streets of London, with their gloomy 
house -walls reeking with smoke, and 
the shops with their small windows and 
inhospitable doors ! The birds are ev- 
erywhere, and the sunshine riots on the 
trellises, the bosquets of symmetrically- 
trimmed trees, the yellow walls and the 
noble fronts of palaces and halls near 
by. Eduard Strauss gives concerts with 
a perfect orchestra in the profusely-orna- 
mented halls near this park when the mu- 
sical season is at its height. Vienna will 
never tire of the Strauss brethren, nor of 
the delicious music which has sprung 
from their brains. Johann — who is a 
positive genius, and whom Americans 
have judged for themselves, since they 
have had an opportunity to hear him 
and see him — appears rarely in public 
as a leader now. He is the imperial 
chapel-master, and court duties and the 
composition of new operas absorb his at- 
tention ; but Eduard is ubiquitous, some- 
times appearing at as many as five pop- 
ular concerts in an evening — here pre- 
siding at a polka, there at a waltz, and 
yet elsewhere beating time to a ravish- 
ing mazurka. The Strauss music is in- 
deed, as Meyerbeer said it was, the "echo 
of the life of Vienna." There is in it an 
immense fund of passion, a flood of tears, 
gay and innocent laughter, the tender mi- 
nor chords of despairing love, of death 
and sorrow ; the wild and voluptuous 
abandonment of the Orient, the nervous 
vigor of the Hungarian song and dance, 
the noble form and rhythm of Italian po- 
etry ; and a certain German humor and 
grotesqueness which belong to no other 
national character. There is a certain 
delicate and refined taste which coldly 
rejects the Strauss compositions as un- 
worthy attention, but no Viennese would 
do so if he could, or could if he would. 
Strauss the father had to run away from 
home to become a musician. He began 
by playing in public balls : by and by he 
made a triumphal tour of Europe, and 



274 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



died loaded with princely honors. Jo- 
hann has become his principal succes- 
sor, although some of the Viennese pre- 
tend to prefer Eduard, who composes 
fewer operas, but mingles more with the 
people. 

Supper is a joyous festival with a very 
large class of the Viennese. The the- 
atres are closed and the audiences are 
on their way home by half-past nine or 
ten o'clock, and father, mother, sons and 
daughters stop to sup in one of the im- 



mense underground restaurants which so 
astonish the stranger. Stairways, broad, 
beautifully decorated and illuminated, 
lead down into the very bowels of the 
earth, and there are spacious saloons 
where thousands of people may be seen 
supping together. The smoke - clouds 
rise from innumerable cigars, but mys- 
teriously disappear. The beer-boys, lit- 
tle pale-faced fellows in black dress- 
coats, shout and run until it seems t(i 
the looker-on as if their legs would come 




THE NORTHERN RAILWAY-STATION. 



off. Laughter is universal, but never rude 
or repulsive. All classes meet in these 
basement restaurants, but never clash. 
Prices are moderate and food is good. 
The Viennese cuisine is as excellent as 
that of Berlin is atrocious. The French- 
man who accused the Prussians of put- 
ting sugar on their beefsteaks and beat- 
ing their wives could not repeat his crit- 
icism in Vienna. The Austrian is much 
more refined in his taste and manners 
than his conquerors are. I regret that 
he imitates them in one particular : he 
persists in eating with his knife. How 
he manages to do it so dexterously with- 



out cutting his throat is a puzzle. The 
quantities of beer consumed are start- 
ling, but the climate seems to allow of 
more drinking than would be possible 
in America. Intoxication is almost un- 
known, at least in public. 

In some restaurants above ground a 
variety performance is carried on upon 
a vast stage from seven until eleven in 
the evening. Officers and their wives, 
family groups, strangers and children, go 
to take their suppers at the Orpheum, the 
most unique restaurant it was ever my for- 
tune to enter. A favorite comic singer 
makes his appearance at about ten eacl> 



HUNGARIAN TYPES AND AUSTRIAN PICTURES. 



275 



evening, and sings local ditties, in the 
choruses of which the audience — if au- 
dience it may be called — joins with a 
gravity and an unction which are ex- 
tremely amusing. The timeworn ballads 
of Augustin, one of the ancient street- 
singers of Vienna, are still repeated with 
affection, and sturdy voices roll out in the 
most natural and unaffected manner the 
words, 

O du lieber Augustin. 
AUes ist hin, 

while the comic artist on the stage beats 
time and says, "All together." When 
the chorus is over he adds, "Now you 
can go on with your eating." 

The Viennese workman enters a res- 
taurant of the lower class, and orders one 
of the savory dishes compounded of veal 
or goose of which the Austrians are so 
fond. As it is generally more than he 
can eat at once, he asks for a bit of pa- 
per, and picking out the available mor- 
sels, makes a bundle of them and stows 
them in his pocket. No false delicacy 
interferes with his determined frugality. 
An American workman would die be- 
fore he would do such a thing. The 
laboring classes in the capital, as a rule, 
get enough to eat, but they have simple 
fare, which our laborers of the humblest 
kind would turn away from in disgust. 
The street-merchants, hackmen, porters 
and commissionaires, all manage to earn 
decent livings. The Vienna coachman 
is a furious driver, is enthusiastically de- 
voted to beer — of which he can consume 
enormous quantities without appearing 
any the worse for it — and is very hon- 
est if he thinks that you are familiar 
with the prices, which are much higher 
than they ought to be. The little one- 
horse coupe is a favorite mode of convey- 
ance for people in easy circumstances, 
but the populace takes to the "tram- 
way," as horse-cars are called through- 



out Europe. These vehicles are divided 
into compartments for smokers and non- 
smokers, and in them every one talks to 
his or her neighbor in the most cordial 
and off-hand manner. The English and 
French sit glaring and scowling at each 
other, but the Austrians are much too 
good-natured to do that. If one asks a 
question a dozen voices are pretty sure 
to be heard in answer, and I had almost 
said that the response would be in as 
many languages. There is a little of the 
democratic crowding to which we are 
accustomed in horse-cars in the United 
States, and although the ladies do not 
ask you for your seat nor expect you to 
give it, a black-haired Jewess may very 
possibly give you her baby to hold, and 
a market-woman may set a heavy bas- 
ket upon your toes. 

One would scarcely think, in the United 
States, of going to a railway - station res- 
taurant in pursuit of an elegant dinner, 
but the restaurants in the Vienna depots 
are so good that it is quite fashionable to 
do exactly that thing. At the Sudbahn 
station game is cooked in the most ex- 
quisite manner. The great depots of Vi- 
enna are excelled by none in the world in 
elegance and beauty. Order and com- 
fort are found in them, combined with 
spaciousness and grace. Swarms of at- 
tentive employes accost the traveller, but 
do not attempt to tear him to pieces. 
They accept modest remuneration in a 
polite manner, and do not ask you for 
"another penny" for drink, as the Eng- 
lish porters do. A good essay on the en- 
viable management of the Austrian rail- 
ways was recently furnished our govern- 
ment by our efficient consul in Vienna, 
General Philip Sidney Post, but I believe 
that the facts have never found their wa)- 
out of the obscurity of the State Depart- 
ment's reports. Edward King. 



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ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 




MONTENEGRIN POPE OF PEROI. 



HE who fails to perceive that he is 
approaching the East as he enters 
Vienna, and who, as he wanders round 
in the gay and briUiant capital, sees 
no signs of Oriental manners and ar- 
chitecture, jnust indeed be dull of appre- 
hension. I remember the startling effect 
which the sight of a certain church-tower 
between Vienna andGratz once produced 
on me. I was on the road to Trieste, 
and, worn out with protracted journey- 
ing, fell asleep in the comfortable coupe 
276 



as the train rolled out of Vienna in the 
early morning. When I awoke the sun 
was scorching my face ; the train was at 
a standstill ; and directly in front of me, 
surrounded by vineyards and fields where 
a profusion of flowers bloomed and mul- 
titudes of birds sang, I saw a — mosque ! 
At least, it seemed to me exactly like the 
pictures of Oriental mosques that I had so 
often seen. There was the bulbous spire, 
the slender point at the top : the resem- 
blance was complete. I rubbed my eyes. 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



277 



and could not believe that I was in Aus- 
tria ; and the illusion was heightened by 
the fact that, leaning from the carriage- 
window, I heard the peasants in the road 
below speaking the smoothly - flowing 
Sclavic tongue : not one word of Ger- 




man could I distinguish. As we 
on to Gratz I looked in vain for other 
churches with this curious outcropping 
of Eastern architecture, but I did not 
find it again until we had travelled more 
than a hundred miles. 



The impression of the immediate prox- 
imity of the East is of course more stri- 
king as one descends the Danube below 
Vienna. The dark faces of the wander- 
ing gypsies, the loose and flowing gar- 
ments worn by the peasants who are 
tending their floating 
flour -mills, and the 
imperturbable gravi- 
ty of the masses have 
very little that is Eu- 
ropean in them. One 
cannot help fancying 
that Asia is about to 
begin at some bound- 
ary arbitrarily 
stretched near at 
hand. In contrast 
with the heavy, 
blonde, voluptuous 
and voluminous types 
of womanhood in Vi- 
enna, one sees the 
swart, lithe, dark- 
eyed women from the 
Sclavic provinces 
held under the odious 
dominion of Turkey. 
There is something 
nameless and inex- 
pressible in the de- 
meanor of these latter 
which at once betrays 
their origin. On the 
Austrian shore of the 
Danube, opposite 
Belgrade, one sees 
people who are so ut- 
terly different from 
the Germans of Vien- 
na, or even the Bo- 
hemians of Prague, 
that he cannot imag- 
ine them to be of the 
same country or con- 
tinent. Austria's 
Sclavic folk are won- 
derfully ' varied : it is 
1 I 1 npossible to believe that they 
can understand one another or have a 
community of ideas and common na- 
tional dreams and ambitions. 

The variety of type in Austria is of 
course far greater than in most other Eu- 



.78 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



ropean countries In the course of many met persons who I could have sworn 
journeys up and down the land I have ! were Italians. Americans, Turks. Servi- 




ans, Frenchmen, but they always proved I tion of Austria, in the little bark Jonio, I 
to be Austrians. Going one day from I was vasdy entertained by a surcreon who 
Trieste to Pola, the principal naval sta- 1 was about to join his ship, and whom I 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



279 



should never have beUeved an Austrian 
had he not given me his word that he 
was a native-born subject of the House 
of Hapsburg. He appeared like an Ital- 
ian when he was conversing in the pret- 
ty Venetian dialect so universally used 
along the Adriatic coast ; like a French- 
man when talking rapidly and well in 
French ; he might readily have been 
mistaken for a person born in a Sclavic 
province when he talked with the mer- 
chants from Fiume or Agram ; but when 
he joked with the officers on the boat 
and swore robust Teutonic "Donnerwet- 
ters !" and " Potztausends !" he seemed 
to me like a foreigner talking German. 
Yet he was born in Vienna, and Ger- 
man was his native tongue. 

Nowhere does one get so remarkable 
a panoramic view of these varied popu- 
lations as during the journey from Vien- 
na to Trieste. The good-natured and per- 
haps a trifle boorish German peasant ; the 
graceful, civil and gentle-spoken repre- 
sentative of the German upper classes ; 
the Styrian laborer in his quaint cos- 
tume ; the stolid, plodding mountaineer, 
with his green hat ornamented with the 
feathers of the heathcock ; the peasant- 
women in their curious headdresses of 
long white cloths ; the rotund, placid 
farmers ; the stiff and haughty retired 
generals of Gratz, — all these are one by 
one left behind, and in their stead one 
passes in review the many and polite 
Sclaves from the towns of Agram and 
Sissek, or their ferocious-looking fellow- 
citizens, the Croatish shepherds and wood- 
cutters from the neighboring plains and 
mountains ; coming at last to the Italian 
types at Adelsberg, and finding them 
everywhere until one arrives at lovely 
Trieste on the shores and cliffs of the 
Adriatic. The brown-eyed, oval-faced, 
chestnut-haired maiden who brings wine 
to the visitor at Prosecco, the little town 
on the great hill which overhangs Trieste, 
seems an alien. What does she in Aus- 
tria ? Is not this Italy into which we 
have suddenly, by some subtle magic, 
been conveyed ? Surely, the architec- 
ture of this roadside inn, with its curious 
mediaeval courtyard, its wooden galleries 
and its deep window - seats, is Italian ; 



and so is yonder chapel, over whose door 
sits a woe-begone saint whose battered 
visage seems covered with lamentations 
for his lost country. Italian is the lan- 
guage spoken by the brown-eyed maid- 
en ; by the old woman who sprawls at 
the roadside, and seems to menace you 
with the evil eye unless you accord alms ; 
by the stealthy-looking rascals who spring 
up a by-path among the rocks as you re- 
turn to your carriage — fellows with rings 
in their ears and long knives in their 
belts ; by the very driver of the car- 
riage — No, he is a German, and is 
cursing you, perhaps, in his thick, un- 
couth way, because you have not sent 
him a draught of beer while he has been 
waiting for you. 

The beauty and quaintness of Trieste 
are all the more surprising because the 
traveller approaches them from the land- 
ward side through such a broken and 
desolate country. Who does not re- 
member what a pang the desolate and 
forbidding scenery of the Karst, that 
rock - strewn country which stretches 
from Adelsberg to Trieste, brought to 
him, coming as it did so soon after the 
luscious panorama of fertile fields at the 
bases of the Carniolan and Julian Alps, 
after the rich lands studded with fine barns 
and comfortable dwellings, and inhabited 
by the merry, frugal, sober, contented 
Sclavonians ? I arrived at Adelsberg for 
the first time just as a beautiful September 
day was drawing to a close. The twilight 
cast a weird mantle over the masses of 
grayish rock which rose everywhere in 
the treeless plains. It seemed a land of 
ambush, of surprises : I could fancy that 
the train might be attacked there. At 
the station little Italian damsels, bare- 
headed and bare-legged, ran to and fro, 
melodiously crying "Fresh water !" which 
cooling draught they carried in earthen 
jars poised daintily on their shapely 
heads. Up a rude road which climbed 
a tiny hill among the piled rocks a group 
of maidens was slowly climbing : each 
girl held another by the hand, and to- 
gether they were singing a tender Ve- 
netian ballad. Again I rubbed my eyes, 
yet I was not dreaming. Only two hours 
before, however, I had left Steinbriick, 



28o 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA, 



the comfortable restaurant-station at the 
junction of the roaring Sann and the 
noble Save, and there, among the lofty 



mountains and the savage and gloomy 
forests, I had found no trace whatever 
of Italians or Italian manners. 




TRIESTE: A CICI FAMILY. 



From Adelsberg to Trieste one is ap- 
parently in the midst of Italian civiliza- 
tion, although great numbers of the in- 



habitants in all the surrounding country 
are Sclavonians. Nothing can be more 
enchanting than this evening ride be- 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



yond Adelsberg, after the most barren 
portion of the Karst is passed. The 
vegetation in the gardens which are 
bestowed among the stones is rich and 
luxuriant : the vine shows its hthe form 
everywhere. Sometimes the terrible bor- 
ra, which works such mischief along the 
Adriatic coast, descends on these plains, 
and sweeps across them with such force 
as to overthrow loaded wagons. When 
a wandering peasant sees the cloud of 
dust raised by the borra he throws him- 
self flat on his face, pulls his cloak over 
his head, makes the sign of the cross, 
and waits for the unwelcome visitor to 
go by. In the Karst there are numerous 
caves and funnel-shaped cavities which 
the old Romans, when they were there- 
about, doubtless thought were the abodes 
of the mischievous winds. 

At Nabresina, a pretty town, thorough- 
ly Italian in aspect, the road begins to 
descend the crags at the foot of which 
Trieste lies. The twilight had deepened 
into darkness ere we arrived there, and 
from the car-windows there was little to 
be seen except the edges of rocks and 
occasional "section-houses " by the track 
overgrown with vines. But presently a 
"large low moon" stole out of a dull 
horizon, and began to invest even the 
most prosaic bits of scenery with her 
proverbial witchery. I leaned out from 
the window, regardless of the sharp ad- 
monition of the guard, who was clam- 
bering from carriage to carriage on the 
narrow outer platform, and who espied 
me. As the moon pierced the thin veil 
of clouds which at first seemed anxious 
to rob her of her glory, the train came 
slowly and carefully round a great pin- 
nacle and rolled along the edge of a high 
precipice. Below, in the distance, were 
the blue waves of the placid Adriatic, 
now illuminated by the chaste moon- 
beams, so that I could see a long path 
of silver, over which merrily slipped 
little barks bound inward to Trieste. 
The effect was exhilarating, delightful: 
in fancy I already saw those headlands 
of the Istrian coast which in the words 
of the old poet "brood o'er the sea;" 
and I strained my eyes to catch a view 
of the lights of Trieste. But the train 



wound on and on under jagged masses 
of rock which seemed certain to fall upon 
and crush us ; beside yawning gulfs into 
which had we been plunged there would 
have been no earthly resurrection for any 
one of us ; through sleepy villages which 
appeared just on the point of committing 
suicide by sliding into the Adriatic; over 
bridges and through tunnels, all high in 
air ; constantly descending — descending 
slowly but surely. At last a line of dan- 
cing lights seemed suddenly to spring 
from the bosom of the waves : far below 
us they beckoned, pirouetted, vanished, 
reappeared. I looked at them steadfastly 
for half an hour, yet we did not seem to 
come nearer them. Just as I was be- 
ginning to despair of ever reaching them 
our engine shrieked, and we rolled into a 
long tunnel. When we came out I could 
find the lights no longer, but in ten min- 
nutes we were in the huge railway-depot 
at Trieste. 

The night was lovely : each touter for 
each hotel gave me such a bad opinion 
of every other that I stored my baggage 
in the station and set off alone for a walk, 
while the rattling omnibuses, with their 
polyglot conductors chattering in Ger- 
man, Italian, French, English, Sclavic 
and Greek, whirled away to the various 
caravansaries. It was ten o'clock, and in 
the harbor basin, along whose edge I took 
my way, the air was melodious with the 
ringing of ships' bells sounding the hour. 
A solemn rich note from the tower of 
some far-away church added harmony 
and beauty to these chimes. I saw but 
few people : here and there a belated 
sailor was sidling toward his bark, keep- 
ing his eyes warily fixed on the prome- 
nading watchman, who seemed half in- 
clined to make him halt and declare 
his name and qualities. Now and then 
I passed a little cafe, in front of which, 
under broad awnings, showily -dressed 
Montenegrins and Greeks were drinking 
sugared water or coffee and playing sim- 
ple games. At last I came to a hostelry 
facing the quay, and, entering, ordered 
the Italian porter to send for my baggage. 
Then I sat down on a bench in the moon- 
light, and watched the rows of fishing- 
boats symmetrically ranged against the 



282 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



stone sides of the quay, their stained 
sails showing out in bold relief in the 
moonlight ; watched 
the great fiery eyes 
of the steamer just 
coming in from Con- 
stantinople, and an- 
other departing for 
Venice ; and watched 
the blue water on 
which all these craft 
were so silently and 
securely cradled. 
Finally, I betook my- 
self sleepily to an ex- 
quisite and diminu- 
tive room, from whose 
windows I could look 
out over the Adriatic, 
and could hear the 
musical resonance of 
the bells from hour to 
hour until, at mid- 
night, the a i r was 
verily burdened with 
it ; and then — and 
then I slept. 

Nothing was stran- 
ger to me next morn- 
ing, as I wandered 
through the narrow 
and antique streets of 
old Trieste, than that 
I belonged to this 
day and generation. 
It seemed to m.e that 
I had somehow gone 
back three hundred 
years — that perhaps 
I was a Dalmatian 
sailor returning from 
some venturesome ex- 
cursion in far Levant, 
and had landed here 
in Trieste to repose 
my weary bones, or 
that I was a Venetian 
merchant or adventu- 
rer strayed away from 
my own proud city for 
a little airing, and 
amusing myself in fair 
Trieste. There was nothing to suggest 
the present century in the massive walls, 



black with age, which reared themselves 
on either side of the lanes, so near to- 




gether that only the most infinitesimal 
bit of blue sky was visible between them 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



283 



at the top. There was no hint of the 
nineteenth century in the tiny shops 
stowed into the most miraculously pic- 
tvesque corners, up the most sombre 
blind alleys and in the most forlorn 
basements. I found a shoemaker direct- 
ly over my head, and a primitive-look- 
ing barber's shop almost under my feet. 
I peered into a cabaret, whose door was 
pierced with a half window protected by 
a thin curtain, and there, on wooden 
benches, I could see sailors with long 
knives in their belts talking uproarious- 
ly and gambling furiously. Climbing a 




PEASANT- WOMAN : NEIGHIJURHOOD OF POLA 



dozen ancient, well-worn stone steps 
to get into the next street, I came upon 
half a dozen bald-headed little babies 
squatted together, crooning and laugh- 
ing in all the recklessness and impu- 
dence of helpless babyhood in the path 
of men and women passing with heavy 
burdens on their broad backs ; yet no 
baby was smashed to a jelly under the 
splay feet of any of the porters, and no 
infant rolled down the steep and danger- 
ous flight of stairs. On a long wall over- 
hanging a courtyard a hundred feet be- 
low a bevy of round-armed, black-haired 
girls were perched, swinging their feet. 



munching fruit and making mock of 
timid passers-by. An unlucky move- 
ment would have precipitated these un- 
trimmed beauties on to the cruel stones 
below ; but they balanced themselves as 
if they had been birds, while they re- 
sponded gayly to the mockeries of two 
young soldiers who, in the window of a 
tall house forty feet above them, were 
looking out on the world and making 
free comments upon it after their own 
fashion. Tired of seeing these towering 
masses of grayish stone always above 
me, I climbed persistently. At last I 
blundered into a blind alley, 
where a party of young maid 
ens, not specially encumber 
ed with clothing, were dan- 
cing merrily to the music of 
a hurdygurdy, whose owner 
had just happened that way. 
The hurdygurdy-man's mon- 
key was of a sociable turn of 
mind, and came up to chatter 
in my ear and to examine the 
texture of my silk umbrella. 
As he betrayed an intense 
anxiety to tear the umbrella 
in pieces, I was compelled to 
chastise him with it. He re- 
treated, howling and chatter- 
ing, to his master : the maid- 
ens, looking up from their 
sport, perceived a stranger 
and hastily dispersed in all 
directions, and the hurdy- 
gurdy - man stood contem- 
plating the hapless wanderer 
who was the innocent cause 
of the sport's interruption with an expres- 
sion of mingled rage and disgust which 
it would be quite impossible for me to 
describe. I retreated precipitately, and 
did not look round until I found myself 
on a broad plateau near an ancient 
church. From this plateau I could over- 
look the port of Trieste and the adja- 
cent mountains. Away across the bay, 
and sheltered from the rude winds of 
winter, as well as from the torrid sum- 
mer suns, by projecting crags, I saw 
the historic chateau of Miramar, world- 
famous since one of the former occu- 
pants died an usurper's death in Mex- 



284 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



ico, and the other met a more horrible 
fate in losing her reason. Poor stately, 
generous Maximilian ! Trieste 
has a good statue of him now 
in one of her squares fronting 
on the bay ; and looking at it, 
and remembering the princi- 
pal points in his character, one 
cannot help a thrill of pity for 
him, for he was emphatically 
a man. Perhaps the Italian 
population here in Trieste 
would not share in this sym- 
pathy ; for, although they are 
loyal and wear an outward 
air of content, they are never 
weary of criticising the Ger- 
mans, whom they dislike. I 
was not a little amused to 
note that some of the most in- 
telligent merchants in Trieste 
share the absurd belief of the 
. Italian lower classes, that the 
central Austrian government 
does all it can to prevent the 
prosperity of Trieste. When 
asked why such a peculiar 
course of conduct should be 
maintained, they shook their 
heads gloomily, and were, I 
fancy, really at a loss for a 
reason. 

Business habits in Trieste 
are notably different from 
those in other portions of the 
Austrian empire, and the cli- 
mate demands the difference. 
In summer the bankers and 
principal merchants enter the 
cool darkened rooms in which 
they transact their affairs at 
an early hour in the morning, 
and work until the sun grows 
hot. The middle of the day 
is given to breakfast and to 
a visit to the corridors of the 
Exchange, where a cosmopol- 
itan throng is always gather- 
ed. The Polish Jew, with his 
incomparably filthy great-coat 
and the slovenly locks of hair 
pulled down in front of his ears, shuffles 
by ; the Greek and the Montenegrin, in 
their white and green petticoats, discuss 



financial matters amicably ; the rotund 
and spectacled German and the refined 




Italian argue questions of trade -policy 
with the Sclaves and Croats ; and the 
shippers and skippers represent every 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



285 



nation under the sun. After the visit to 
the Exchange, and a cup of coffee or an 
ice in one of the pleasant cafes which 
abound in the vicinity, the merchants 
disappear from pubUc view until three 
o'clock. At that hour banks and whole- 
sale establishments are reopened, and 
work goes on uninterruptedly until six. 
Then the streets are filled with people 
taking the air before supper : they flock 
to the principal promenades and gardens 
to hear music, they stroll on the piers or 
they loll in the shade of their own court- 
yards until twilight or dark, when they 
refresh themselves copiously after the 
day's fatigue. 

Looking seaward from the terrace, old 
Trieste seems in some miraculous fash- 
ion to disappear, and the new town, 
with its handsome piers, its wide and 
well -paved streets, its pleasant hotels, 
and its main avenue, the " Corso," comes 
into view. The German element is so 
thoroughly subordinated here that one 
sees almost nothing of it. The apothe- 
cary, the bookseller, the photographer, 
the silk-merchant, all advertise their ar- 
ticles of merchandise in Italian ; the news- 
papers, printed in black, heavy type on 
thick, muddy paper, are in Italian ; the 
" commissionnaire " who offers to show 
you the sights of Trieste addresses you 
in English with a strong Italian accent ; 
the black-eyed ladies languidly prome- 
nading wear lace veils thrown loosely 
over their beautiful heads and talk in 
high Italian key. The playbill, in Italian, 
announces a most extraordinary season 
of comedy : if you attend the theatre in 
the evening, you will find that the au- 
dience is almost entirely composed of 
women, all of whom have the inevitable 
black lace veils or at least coquettish 
black bonnets ; the play will doubtless 
be highly spiced with allusions to do- 
mestic infelicity and to the failings of 
the representatives of Mother Church ; 
the ladies will manifest their enthusiasm 
by tears, sometimes by tapping upon the 
backs of the chairs in front of them with 
their fans. At the opera — which is often 
extremely good — the haut to7i of Trieste 
is to be seen — the German officials and 
their wives, the Italian merchants and 



the upper crust of the Hebrew social 
fabric. These same people also frequent 
the huge and beautifully decorated halls 
in which the best of classical music and 
moderately good beer are served up to- 
gether. Hundreds of elegantly-dressed 
ladies and gentlemen are sometimes seen 
in one of these halls at supper, while the 
orchestra in the gallery plays the dreamy 
music of Donizetti or startles the ear 
with audacious refrains from Wagner's 
Tetralogy. 

On this terrace stands the cathedral 
of San Giusto, a sombre edifice filled 
with memorials of the Romans. It is 
an odd collection of basilicas, baptist- 
eries and Byzantine churches, represent- 
ing all grades of architecture from the 
fifth to the fourteenth century ; and Ro- 
man columns aid in supporting the prin- 
cipal tower. Underneath a stone in front 
of this venerable edifice lies Fouche, 
who played such a singular and import- 
ant role under Napoleon I. as minister 
of police, and who gave up the ghost at 
Trieste in 1820. Winckelmann, the great 
German archaeologist, is also buried near 
by, not far from a museum of antiquities 
which is appropriately located in a ven- 
erable burying -ground. Winckelmann 
was robbed and murdered in a tavern in 
Trieste more than a hundred years ago. 
To-day the traveller's life is as safe in 
the well-ordered town as it is in Paris. 
The Austrian police understand how to 
enforce the law in a seaport ; and when 
a Montenegrin comes to town he has to 
lay aside the small arsenal of v/eapons 
which he usually carries in his belt be- 
fore he is permitted to land. 

Landward, seaward, the view is en- 
trancing. In winter the mountains now 
and then take on a bleak aspect, for the 
wind is sometimes unkind at Trieste ; but 
in summer the exquisite effects of light 
and shadow on the tall crags, the wide 
expanse of the placid blue water, the 
sleepy headlands that seem to hide such 
mysteries behind them, and the rows of 
colored sails gliding in and out among 
the large ciaft, make a fascinating pic- 
ture. There is wealth of curious costume 
in the market-places, for the Istrian and 
Dalmatian peasants still keep to their an- 



286 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 




C^flsi^n 



PARENZO : THE CATHEDRAL, A RELIC OF THE EARLIEST AGES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



cient dress. The great square of the Pes- 
cheria, the fish-market of Trieste, is filled 
from early morning till noon with a crowd 
of babbling girls and women dressed in 
glaring colors, bare-headed, and some- 



times bare-footed. The fruit-venders sit 
lazily all day behind stands piled with 
luscious grapes, figs, melons and pome- 
granates, and do not even take the trouble 
to cry their wares. Late in the afternoon 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



287 



a little steamer comes bustling to a wharf 
near the Pescheria, and the gossiping wo- 
men flock to it with their baskets on their 
heads. As soon as all are on board a 
whistle blows, and the noisy freight is 
whisked off to Capo d'Istria, where these 
worthy fishmongers live, and whence they 
draw their supplies. 

Capo d' Istria. ! An odd corner indeed ! 
Old Trieste is modern compared with this : 
the past seems to have got a firm hold in 
Istria ; there is no hint of modernism, 
unless it be a huge state prison, which 
stands on an eminence overlooking a 
breezy estuary. No ! the prison accords 
well with the ancient walls, the curious 
Venetian gateways, the alleys so narrow 
that one cannot help thinking that the 
houses have just been jostling each 
other, the forbidding passages where it 
seems as if assassins, lying in wait with 
long sharp daggers, must be the inevita- 
ble and fitting accessories. The inhabit- 
ants of all this region were once greatly 
given to piracy and brigandage, but now 
they are peaceful and law-abiding, as they 
may well be under the shadow of the great 
frowning prison. This was the Justinap- 
olis of the Romans, and there are many 
traces of the dominion of those hard- 
headed old conquerors in all the terri- 
tory. The Venetians came to Capo 
d'Istria nine hundred years ago, and 
stayed there long after other portions 
of Istria had passed into the hands of 
the Austrians. The central square of 
the town is as Venetian as the great 
plaza of St. Mark : into the dimly-light- 
ed cathedral which stands in a recess at 
one extremity the peasant men and wo- 
men daily flock and fall on their knees in 
prayer. They wander about under the 
olive trees, and never seem to do any 
work except at prayer -time. The ho- 
tels in Capo d'Istria are repulsive-look- 
ing stone structures, through whose lower 
stories long and narrow passages lead 
into pretty gardens where waiters serve 
the foaming Asti, the delicious Prosecco, 
and the dark-red traitorous Istrian wine, 
which is pleasant to the palate, but dan- 
gerous to the brain. The good German 
burghers from the more Teutonic por- 
tions of Austria greatly enjoy a journey 



to Capo d'Istria and deep draughts of 
its wine. 

Outside the gates of the town — for 
Capo d'Istria has gates and walls — the 
country looks as wild and uncivilized as 
it was a thousand years ago. A poorly- 
graded road leads over some rolling 
hills to the adjacent town of Pirano, a 
picturesque place as seen from the sea, 
but common and dirty when approached 
by land. A few poorly -clad women, 
driving donkeys laden with grain, fish 
or vegetables, and one or two swine- 
herds, followed by their snorting, bur- 
rowing charges, are the only living ob- 
jects which greet the eye, unless per- 
chance a blind, halt or lame beggar 
looms up before the visitor, insisting 
with outstretched skinny hand upon im- 
mediate alms. The Istrian peasantry in 
the interior are not over fond of the stran- 
ger : they laugh at his European clothes, 
and find his modern refinements repul- 
sive ; they understand him and his new 
notions as little as they do the colossal 
remains of the fortified towns of the peo- 
ple of the Stone Age which are scattered 
through Istria. But these good folk are 
nevertheless far from wishing the wander- 
er any harm : they will not throw a brick 
at him, as an English farm-laborer might 
do. And if they do not understand hos- 
pitality very well, it is because they so 
rarely have any occasion to practise it. 

These little Istrian towns, Capo d'Istria, 
Omago, Cittanova, Parenzo, Orsara, Ro- 
vigno, scattered along the pretty coast 
from Trieste to Pola, know nothing of 
railroads, and many of them have no 
regular steamer communication with the 
outer world. The people who live in 
the smaller towns by the water-side fur- 
nish fine recruits for the Austrian navy : 
the women rarely leave home. Many 
of them have never been twenty miles 
from their native towns in their lives, and 
their only amusement is rambling among 
the rocks or making pilgrimages to the 
neighboring monastery. The pilgrimage 
is a great feature of life in all these south- 
ern Austrian provinces : on the wild Dal- 
matian border, among the rugged rocks, 
the traveller may any day come upon a 
long procession of men and women car- 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



rying candles or branches of trees or 1 the road to a cross placed high on some 
rudely -fashioned crucifixes, and all on | wooded hill or to a church on a pinnacle. 




It is said that a quarter of a million per- 
sons annually visit the pilgrimage church 
of Marienzell in the Styrian Mountains ; 



and in every mountain-region the num- 
bers might be counted by thousands. 
Some of the small Istrian towns are 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



289 



scourged by malaria, which the inhab- 
itants bow down before without the least 
endeavor to escape from it. Much of the 
ill-health is due to the wretched drainage 
of the houses and to the poor food eaten 
by these folk, but he who should attempt 
to teach them new and better ways would 
run the risk of being burned as a sorcerer. 

Pola, with its grand Roman amphi- 
theatre, with its fine hills and its excel- 
lent basin, where the Austrian govern- 
ment generally keeps a large fleet sta- 
tioned, is well enough known to the 
traveller who has made the journey to 
Antivari or Corfu. The Austrians are 
proud of their naval station, which they 
have fortified, and are continually forti- 
fying, with consummate care. The town 
is a shrine filled with great memories. 
Augustus built a fine resort there, en- 
riched it with superb monuments and 
called it Pietas Julia. Belisarius went 
out from Pola with the fleet which was 
destined to assemble before Ravenna. 
A royal Roman road led from Pola to 
Trieste. The Venetian republic took the 
town in the twelfth century, and kept 
possession of it until its fall. So rich was 
Pola in Roman memorials that the Aus- 
trians, when they wished to build a cit- 
adel on an advantageous point of land, 
were compelled to destroy the remains 
of a beautiful ancient theatre. One of 
the present gates of the town is the Por- 
ta Aurea, which the magnificent Sergius 
erected in honor of his victory. The 
temple of Diana has been transformed 
into a block of dwellings, as has the 
superb palace of Diocletian at Spoleto. 
Your landlord is liable to tell you that 
you are lodged in the temple of Jupiter, 
and he may possibly invite you to crack 
a bottle of wine with him in the palace 
of Justice. One treads upon dust of 
antique monuments at every step, and 
under the foundations of the breweries, 
arsenals and shiphouses of the Pola of 
to-day lie the ruined tombs and sarcoph- 
agi of which Dante has sung in his In- 
ferno. 

He who voyages on the Adriatic in 

autumn needs courage, especially if he 

sails along the Istrian and Dalmatian 

coast. The borra sweeps down without 

19 



warning, and straightway the sea is trans- 
formed from a tranquil sheet of lovely 
blue water into the veriest whirlpool and 
mad vortex of waves imaginable. The 
rugged coast which must be skirted be- 
fore the entrance to Pola harbor can be* 
reached becomes a constant danger : the 
small steamers rock down to their rails, 
and now and then seem just on the point 
of sinking. Soldiers m transitu swear, 
peasants howl, friars count their beads 
and pray, travellers from other climes, 
accustomed to the buffetings of a dozen 
oceans, suffer and are silent. Although 
this coasting seems but child's play to 
the inexperienced observer, it is fraught 
with great danger, and requires accurate 
and immediate judgment on the part of 
the captain, as any one journeying from 
Trieste to Cattaro or Antivari will readi- 
ly discover. 

Southward from the southernmost point 
of Istria stretches along the coast a gar- 
land of small islands, many of which are 
inhabited by only a few fishermen and 
friars. For two hundred miles the steam- 
ers can make their way tranquilly be- 
tween these islands and the mainland, 
feeling but little of the inconveniences 
of storms which lash the sea just outside 
the islets. In summer and in autumn a 
journey through these long canals, past 
these pretty islands, on whose reddish- 
brown rocks the resplendent sunlight 
of these latitudes produces the most en- 
trancing and bewitching effects of color, 
is an experience never to be forgotten. 
Land is never lost sight of: on either side 
there are houses, gardens, peaks capped 
with monasteries, peaceful villages, fer- 
tile fields, valleys rich with vines, gulfs 
as tranquil as broad rivers. At night the 
steamer cautiously picks its way into the 
dozens of small ports, and chattering 
throngs of boatmen, lighting up the dark 
water with torches, row out their little 
barks to receive the mails and the mer- 
chandise. In every large port one comes 
upon a variation in dialect, in dress and 
in features. 

One almost forgets that Austria is not 
Italian as he wanders for days in these 
towns and among these mountains, where 
the signs on the shops and rustic inns and 



290 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



the manners of the 
people are all Italian 
in tone. The Scla- 
vonic population, al- 
though numerous in 
all these regions, 
does not give any 
surface evidences of 
its existence. But it 
is easy to find within 
a night's journey from 
Trieste towns and 
sections where the 
Sclavic is spoken al- 
most exclusively, and 
where there is not an 
Italian sign to be 
found over a single 
shop. I made an ex- 
cursion in 1875 from 
Steinbriick, which is 
on the direct railway- 
line from Vienna to 
Trieste, down the 
valley of the Save 
River to Agram and 
Sissek and the towns 
beyond on the Turk- 
ish border. The 
Save — or Sau, as the 
Germans call it — is a 
capricious and 
charming stream, 
born of pure springs 
far in the recesses of 
the lofty Carniolan 
Alps. It rushes down 
through the forests, 
now breaking, a ver- 
itable torrent, through 
some frightful chasm, 
now flowing smooth- 
ly through rich mead- 
ows, and now — as at 
Steinbriick, where it 
receives the waters of 
the Sann — becoming 
broad and shallow as 
it finds room in a val- 
ley at the bases of the 
great hills. Around 
Steinbriick the sce- 
nery is grand, impos- 
ing, in some of the 




ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



29] 



gorges awful. The precipices are ma- 
jestic in their beauty. The road thence 




to Agram leads high above the river, 
along beetling crags, around corners 



where an unskilful engineer would throw 
his train hundreds of feet on to rocks be- 
low, and through 
villages lying un- 
der the walls of 
some vast chateau, 
whose owner is 
doubtless spending 
his income in riot- 
ous living in Vien- 
na. Agram has no 
specially remark- 
able architectural 
features: the au- 
tumn climate there 
reminds one of the 
charms of Indian 
summer in New 
England and in 
the Middle States; 
and I found myself 
imagining several 
times during my 
stay there that I 
had been transport- 
ed by magic into 
some quiet New 
England city of 
twenty - five thou- 
sand inhabitants. 
Yet I was possess- 
ed of this illusion 
only when I look- 
ed at some of the 
comfortable man- 
sions, in whose wide 
yards children were 
rollicking and spec- 
tacled maidens sat 
reading books hour 
by hour. The white- 
go w n e d peasant- 
women, with their 
flaming -red head- 
dresses, who served 
in the market ; the 
men, with their 
square- brimmed 
Hungarian hats, 
their amply-flowing 
white trousers, 
their girdles filled 
with knives, and their clownish man- 
ners, certainly furnished no reminders 



292 



ODD CORNERS IN AUSTRIA. 



of New England. Agram is a rich and 
thriving town, and, like Belgrade in Ser- 
via, one of the centres whence come the 
great propelling forces now at work in 
the interests of Pansclavism. Agram has 
universities, fine schools of upper and 
lower grade, and a hundred organiza- 
tions for culture and refinement : it has 
subtle and active politicians also, and 
the central Austrian government keeps 
a strong garrison there, ready to declare 
it in a state of siege if at any time the 
sympathies of the leaders should bid 
fair to lead the country into war or dis- 
agreeable diplomatic negotiations. These 
Sclaves of Croatia hate the Hungarians 
and the influence which they possess in 
Austria to-day as bitterly as the Servians 
do. The people of the aristocratic and 
commercial classes are refined, polite 
and hospitable. They live much in the 
open air, and gather for supper in the 
evening in the courtyards of the large 
hotels to listen to music and to chat 
together. 

Round about Agram the plains stretch 
out, seemingly limitless as the prairies of 
Illinois, after a few fertile hills are passed. 
Agram itself lies on a hill, the top of which 
is occupied by a handsome square, sur- 
rounded with cafes and pretty mansions. 
In early autumn the waving grain and 
the dark green of the trees along the 
banks of the Save contrast prettily with 
the gay colors of the garments worn by 
the peasant-women trudging afield and 
doing a large share of the heavy farm- 
work. The road to Sissek leads through 
a level land dotted with moss-grown vil- 
lages. In the narrow streets of these an- 
cient dorfs wild -looking children watch 
flocks of screaming geese, and a few old 
women sit spinning or knitting in the 
sun. The young people make profound 
obeisances, and the old ones repeat the 
traditional formula, "I kiss your hand," 
when addressed by a stranger. Sissek is 
a rambling village, divided by the Save 
into military and civil quarters : a strong 
garrison is always maintained there, as 



in most of the towns on the Austrian 
side of the river. A little below the town 
stands an old stone castle which has been 
often besieged by the Turks when in their 
wild wars they set their faces toward Vi- 
enna. To-day this historical chateau is 
— alas for the romance of association ! — 
a cheese-factory ! 

To Sissek and to many other towns 
on the Save, which here begins to be 
a broad and navigable stream, refugees 
from Bosnia have been flocking in great 
numbers for the last eighteen months. 
Nothing has done more to excite to fiery 
pitch of indignation the Sclavic popula- 
tions of this interesting and influential sec^ 
tion of Austria than the sight of these un- 
happy thousands driven from their homes 
by the cruelty of the rapacious and blood- 
thirsty Turk. Centuries of enforced deg- 
radation have done their work on these 
unfortunate masses, these timorous and 
dependent Christians, who are themselves 
harmless, laborious and frugal when not 
driven to desperation. The Austrian 
government has not been hard-hearted 
enough to send the cowering wretches 
back across the boundary to a fate which 
is worse than death, and hundreds of 
them are settling in Croatia and Sclavo- 
nia. Some day, when they have learn- 
ed the difficult lesson of independence, 
they will arise and turn their weapons 
against those who have beaten them 
down into the very dust; and then let 
the oppressor tremble ! But up to the 
present time they have not been allow- 
ed to have any weapons : an ignorant 
and malicious Mohammedan police has 
watched them with the most untiring 
care, and has succeeded, by terrible 
punishments inflicted upon the few dar- 
ing ones who have attempted to con- 
spire, in frightening all the others into 
passive endurance. It seems now as if 
the hour of deliverance has sounded ; ■ 
yet no man can venture to prophesy 
what is to be the role of the Sclaves in 
Austria in the settlement of the Sclavic 
question. Edward King. 



ALONG THE DANUBE. ^. k^ 



7 




SOMENDRIA. 



AD A-K AL£ is a Turkish fortress which 
seems to spring directly from the bo- 
som of the Danube at a point where three 
curious and quarrelsome races come into 
contact, and where the Ottoman thought 
it necessary to have a foothold even in 
times of profound peace. To the trav- 
eller from Western Europe no spectacle 
on the way to Constantinople was so im- 
pressive as this ancient and picturesque 
fortification, suddenly affronting the vis- 
ion with its odd walls, its minarets, its 
red-capped sentries, and the yellow sin- 
ister faces peering from balconies sus- 
pended above the current. It was the 
first glimpse of the Orient which one ob- 



tained ; it appropriately introduced one 
to a domain which is governed by sword 
and gun ; and it was a pretty spot of color 
in the midst of the severe and rather sol- 
emn scenery of the Danubian stream. 
Ada- Kale is to be razed to the water's 
edge — so, at least, the treaty between 
Russia and Turkey has ordained — and 
the Servian mountaineers will no longer 
see the Crescent flag flying within rifle- 
shot of the crags from which, by their 
heroic devotion in unequal battle, they 
long ago banished it. 

The Turks occupying this fortress dur- 
ing the recent war evidently relied upon 
Fate for their protection, for the walls of 

293 



294 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



Ada-Kale are within a stone's throw of 
the Roumanian shore, and every Mus- 
sulman in the place could have been 
captured in twenty minutes. I passed 
by there one morning on the road from 
Orsova, on the frontier of Hungary, to 
Bucharest, and was somewhat amused 
to see an elderly Turk seated in a small 
boat near the Roumanian bank fishing. 
Behind him were two soldiers, who serv- 
ed as oarsmen, and rowed him gently 
from point to point when he gave the 
signal. Scarcely six hundred feet from 
him stood a Wallachian sentry, watch- 
ing his movements in lazy, indifferent 
fashion. And this was at the moment 
that the Turks were bombarding Kalafat 
in Roumania from Widdin on the Bulga- 
rian side of the Danube ! Such a spec- 
tacle could be witnessed nowhere save 
in this land, "where it is always after- 
noon," where people at times seem to 
suspend respiration because they are too 
idle to breathe, and where even a dog 
will protest if you ask him to move 
quickly out of your path. The old Turk 
doubtless fished in silence and calm un- 
til the end of the war, for I never heard 
of the removal of either himself or his 
companions. 

The journeys by river and by rail from 
Lower Roumania to the romantic and 
broken country surrounding Orsova are 
extremely interesting. The Danube- 
stretches of shimmering water among 
the reedy lowlands — where the only 
sign of life is a quaint craft painted with 
gaudy colors becalmed in some nook, or 
a guardhouse built on piles driven into 
the mud — are perhaps a trifle monoto- 
nous, but one has only to turn from them 
to the people who come on board the 
steamer to have a rich fund of enjoy- 
ment. Nowhere are types so abundant 
and various as on the routes of trav- 
el between Bucharest and Rustchuk, or 
Pesth and Belgrade. Every complexion, 
an extraordinary piquancy and variety of 
costume, and a bewildering array of lan- 
guages and dialects, are set before the 
careful observer. As for myself, I found 
a special enchantment in the scenery of 
the lower Danube — in the lonely inlets, 
the wildernesses of young shoots in the 



marshes, the flights of aquatic birds as 
the sound of the steamer was heard, the 
long tongues of land on which the water- 
buffaloes lay huddled in stupid content, 
the tiny hummocks where villages of 
wattled hovels were assembled. The 
Bulgarian shore stands out in bold re- 
lief: Sistova, from the river, is positive- 
ly beautiful, but the now historical Sim- 
nitza seems only a mud-flat. At night 
the boats touch upon the Roumanian 
side for fuel — the Turks have always 
been too lazy and vicious to develop the 
splendid mineral resources of Bulgaria 
— and the stout peasants and their wives 
trundle thousands of barrows of coal 
along the swinging planks. Here is raw 
life, lusty, full of rude beauty, but utterly 
incult. The men and women appear to 
be merely animals gifted with speech. 
The women wear almost no clothing: 
their matted hair drops about their 
shapely shoulders as they toil at their 
burden, singing meanwhile some merry 
chorus. Little tenderness is bestowed 
on these creatures, and it was not with- 
out a slight twinge of the nerves that I 
saw the huge, burly master of the boat's 
crew now and then bestow a ringing 
slap with his open hand upon the neck 
or cheek of one of the poor women who 
stumbled with her load or who hesitated 
for a moment to indulge in abuse of a 
comrade. As the boat moved away these 
people, dancing about the heaps of coal 
in the torchlight, looked not unlike de- 
mons disporting in some gruesome nook 
of Enchanted Land. When they were 
gypsies they did not need the aid of the 
torches : they were sufficiently demoni- 
acal without artificial aid. 

Kalafat and Turnu-Severinu are small 
towns which would never have been 
much heard of had they not been in the 
region visited by the war. Turnu-Seve- 
rinu is noted, however, as the point where 
Severinus once built a mighty tower; 
and not far from the little hamlet may 
still be seen the ruins of Trajan's im- 
memorial bridge. Where the Danube 
is twelve hundred yards wide and near- 
ly twenty feet deep, ApoUodorus of Da- 
mascus did not hesitate, at Trajan's com- 
mand, to undertake the construction of 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



295 



a bridge with 
twenty stone and 
wooden arches. 
He builded well, 
for one or two 
of the stone 
piers still remain 
perfect a f t e r a 
lapse of sixteen 
centuries, and 
eleven of them, 
more or less ruin- 
ed, are yet visible 
at low water, 
ApoUodorus was 
a man of genius, 
as his other work, 
the Trajan Col- 
umn, proudly 
standing in 
Rome, amply tes- 
tifies. No doubt 
he was richly re- 
warded by Tra- 
jan for construct- 
ing a work which, 
flanked as it was 
by noble fortifi- 
cations, bound 
the newly - cap- 
tured Dacian col- 
ony to the Roman 
empire. What 
mighty men were 
these Romans, 
who carved their 
way a 1 on g the 
Danube banks, 
hewing roads and 
levelling moun- 
tains at the same 
time that they 
engaged the sav- 
ages of the local- 
ity in daily bat- 
tle ! There were 
indeed giants in 
those days. 

When Ada-Kale is passed, and pretty 
Orsova, lying in slumbrous quiet at the 
foot of noble mountains, is reached, the 
last trace of Turkish domination is left 
behind. In future years, if the treaty 
of San Stefano holds, there will b& little 




evidence of Ottoman lack of civilization 
an /where on the Danube, for the forts 
of the Turks will gradually disappear, 
and the Mussulman cannot for an in- 
stant hold his own among Christians 
where he has no military advantage. 



296 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



But at Orsova, although the red fez and 
voluminous trousers are rarely seen, the 
influence of Turkey is keenly felt. It is 
in these remote regions of Hungary that 
the real rage against Russia and the 
burning enthusiasm and sympathy for 
the Turks is most openly expressed. 
Every cottage in the neighborhood is 
filled with crude pictures representing 
events of the Hungarian revolution; and 
the peasants, as they look upon those re- 
minders of perturbed times, reflect that 
the Russians were instrumental in pre- 
venting the accomplishment of their dear- 
est wishes. Here the Hungarian is emi- 
nently patriotic : he endeavors as much 
as possible to forget that he and his are 
bound to the empire of Austria, and he 
speaks of the German and the Slav who 
are his fellow-subjects with a sneer. The 
people whom one encounters in that cor- 
ner of Hungary profess a dense igno- 
rance of the German language, but if 
pressed can speak it glibly enough. I 
won an angry frown and an unpleasant 
lemark from an innkeeper because I did 
not know that Austrian postage-stamps 
are not good in Hungary. Such melan- 
choly ignorance of the simplest details 
of existence seemed to my host meet 
subject for reproach. 

Orsova became an important point as 
soon as the Turks and Russians were at 
war. The peasants of the Banat stared 
as they saw long lines of travellers leav- 
ing the steamers which had come from 
Pesth and Bazros, and invading the two 
small inns, which are usually more than 
half empty. Englishmen, Russians, Aus- 
trian officers sent down to keep careful 
watch upon the land, French and Prus- 
sian , Swiss and Belgian military attaches 
and couriers, journalists, artists, amateur 
army - followers, crowded the two long 
streets and exhausted the market. Next 
came a hungry and thirsty mob of refu- 
gees from Widdin — Jews, Greeks and 
gypsies — and these promenaded their 
variegated misery on the river -banks 
from sunrise until sunset. Then out from 
Roumanian land poured thousands of 
wretched peasants, bare -footed, bare- 
headed, dying of starvation, fleeing from 
Turkish invasion, which, happily, never 



assumed large proportions. These poor 
people slept on the ground, content with 
the shelter of house-walls : they subsist- 
ed on unripe fruits and that unfailing 
fund of mild tobacco which every male 
being in all those countries invariably 
manages to secure. Walking abroad in 
Orsova was no easy task, for one was 
constantly compelled to step over these 
poor fugitives, who packed themselves 
into the sand at noonday, and managed 
for a few hours before the cool evening 
breezes came to forget their miseries. 
The vast fleet of river-steamers belong- 
ing to the Austrian company was laid 
up at Orsova, and dozens of captains, 
conversing in the liquid Slav or the 
graceful Italian or guttural German, were 
for ever seated about the doors of the lit- 
tle cafes smoking long cigars and quaff- 
ing beakers of the potent white wine pro- 
duced in Austrian vineyards. 

Opposite Orsova lie the Servian Moun- 
tains, bold, majestic, inspiring. Their 
noble forests and the deep ravines be- 
tween them are exquisite in color when 
the sun flashes along their sides. A few 
miles below the point where the Hun- 
garian and Roumanian territories meet 
the mountainous region declines into 
foot-hills, and then to an uninteresting 
plain. The Orsovan dell is the cul- 
minating point of all the beauty and 
grandeur of the Danubian hills. From 
one eminence richly laden with vine- 
yards I looked out on a fresh April 
morning across a delicious valley fill- 
ed with pretty farms and white cottages 
and ornamented by long rows of shape- 
ly poplars. Turning to the right, I saw 
Servia's barriers, shutting in from the 
cold winds the fat lands of the interior ; 
vast hillsides dotted from point to point 
with peaceful villages, in the midst of 
which white churches with slender spires 
arose ; and to the left the irregular line 
of the Roumanian peaks stood up, jag- 
ged and broken, against the horizon. 
Out from Orsova runs a rude highway 
into the rocky and savage back-country. 
The celebrated baths of Mehadia, the 
"hot springs" of the Austro-Hungarian 
empire, are yearly frequented by three 
or four thousand sufferers, who come 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



297 



from the European capitals to Tames- I gences to the water-cure. But the rail- 
''ar, and are thence trundled in dili- 1 way is penetrating even this far-off land, 




where once brigands delighted to wan- 
der, and Temesvar and Bucharest will 
be bound together by a daily "through- 



service " as regular as that between Pesth 
and Vienna. 

I sat one evening on the balcony of 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



the diminutive inn known as "The Hun- 
garian Crown," watching the sunbeams 
on the broad current of the Danube and 
listening to the ripple, the plash and the 
gurgle of the swollen stream as it rushed 
impetuously against the banks. A group 
of Servians, in canoes light and swift as 
those of Indians, had made their way 
across the river, and were struggling 
vigorously to prevent the current from 
carrying them below a favorable land- 
ing-place. These tall, slender men, with 
bronzed faces and gleaming eyes, with 
their round skull-caps, their gaudy jack- 
ets and ornamental leggings, bore no 
small resemblance at a distance to cer- 
tain of our North American red-skins. 
Each man had a long knife in his belt, 
and from experience I can say that a 
Servian knife is in itself a complete tool- 
chest. With its one tough and keen 
blade one may skin a sheep, file a saw, 
split wood, mend a wagon, defend one's 
self vigorously if need be, make a but- 
tonhole and eat one's breakfast. No 
Servian who adheres to the ancient cos- 
tume would consider himself dressed un- 
less the crooked knife hung from his gir- 
dle. Although the country-side along 
the Danube is rough, and travellers are 
said to need protection among the Ser- 
vian hills, I could not discover that the 
inhabitants wore other weapons than 
these useful articles of cutlery. Yet they 
are daring smugglers, and sometimes 
openly, defy the Hungarian authorities 
when discovered. "Ah!" said Master 
Josef, the head-servant of the Hunga- 
rian Crown, "many a good fight have I 
seen in mid-stream, the boats grappled 
together, knives flashing, and our fel- 
lows drawing their pistols. All that, too, 
for a few flasks of Negotin, which is a 
musty red, thick wine that Heaven would 
forbid me to recommend to your honor- 
able self and companions so long as I 
put in the cellar the pearl dew of yon- 
der vineyards !" pointing to the vines of 
Orsova. 

While the Servians were anxiously 
endeavoring to land, and seemed to be 
in imminent danger of upsetting, the roll 
of thunder was heard and a few drops 
of rain fell with heavy plash. Master 



Josef forthwith began making shutters 
fast and tying the curtains; "For now 
we shall have a wind !" quoth he. And 
it came. As by magic the Servian shore 
was blotted out, and before me I could 
see little save the river, which seemed 
transformed into a roaring and foam- 
ing ocean. The refugees, the gypsies, 
the Jews, the Greeks, scampered in all 
directions. Then tremendous echoes 
awoke among the hills. Peal after peal 
echoed and re-echoed, until it seemed 
as if the cliffs must crack and crumble. 
Sheets of rain were blown by the mis- 
chievous winds now full upon the un- 
happy fugitives, or now descended with 
seemingly crushing force on the Ser- 
vians in their dancing canoes. Then 
came vivid lightning, brilliant and in- 
stant glances of electricity, disclosing 
the forests and hills for a moment, then 
seeming by their quick departure to ren- 
der the obscurity more painful than be- 
fore. The fiery darts were hurled by 
dozens upon the devoted trees, and the 
tall and graceful stems were bent like 
reeds before the rushing of the blast. 
Cold swept through the vale, and shad- 
ows seemed to follow it. Such contrast 
with the luminous, lovely semi-tropical 
afternoon, in the dreamy restfulness of 
which man and beast seemed settling 
into lethargy, was crushing. It pained 
and disturbed the spirit. Master Josef, 
who never lost an occasion to cross him- 
self and to do a few turns on a little ro- 
sary of amber beads, came and went in 
a kind of dazed mood while the storm 
was at its height. Just as a blow was 
struck among the hills which seemed to 
make the earth quiver to its centre, the 
varlet approached and modestly inquired 
if the "honorable society" — myself and 
chance companions — would visit that 
very afternoon the famous chapel in 
which the crown of Hungary lies buried. 
I glanced curiously at him, thinking that 
possibly the thunder had addled his brain. 
" Oh, the honorable society may walk in 
sunshine all the way to the chapel at five 
o'clock," he said with an encouraging 
grin. "These Danube storms come and 
go as quickly as a Tsigane from a hen- 
roost. See ! the thunder has stopped its 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



299 



howling, and there 
is not a wink of 
lightning. Even 
the raindrops are 
so few that one 
may almost walk 
between them." 

I returned to 
the balcony from 
which the storm 
had driven me, 
and was gratified 
by the sight of the 
mount a i n-side 
studded with 
pearls, which a 
faint glow in the 
sky was g e n tl y 
touching. The 
Danube roared 
and foamed with 
malicious glee as 
the poor Servians 
were still whirled 
about on the wa- 
ter. But present- 
ly, through the 
deep gorges and 
along the sombre 
stream and over 
the vineyards, the 
rocks and the 
roofs of humble 
cottages, stole a 
warm breeze, fol- 
lowed by dazzling 
sunlight, which 
returned in mad 
haste to atone for 
the displeasure of 
the wind and rain. 
In a few moments 
the refugees were 
again afield, 
spreading their 
drenched gar- 
ments on the 
wooden railings, 
and stalking 
about in a condi- 
tion narrowly ap- 
proaching naked- 
ness. A gypsy 
four feet high, 




300 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



clad in a linen shirt and trousers so wide 
as to resemble petticoats, strolled thought- 
lessly on the bank singing a plaintive 
melody, and now and then turning his 
brown face skyward as if to salute the 
sun. This child of mysterious ancestry, 
this wanderer from the East, this robber 
of roosts and cunning worker in metals, 
possessed nor hat nor shoes : his naked 
breast and his unprotected arms must 
suffer cold at night, yet he seemed won- 
derfully happy. The Jews and Greeks 
gave him scornful glances, which he re- 
turned with quizzical, provoking smiles. 
At last he threw himself down on a plank 
from which the generous sun was rapidly 
drying the rain, and, coiling up as a dog 
might have done, he was soon asleep. 

With a marine glass I could see dis- 
tinctly every movement on the Servian 
shore. Close to the water's edge nestled 
a small village of neat white cottages. 
Around a little wharf hovered fifty or 
sixty stout farmers, mounted on sturdy 
ponies, watching the arrival of the Mer- 
cur, the Servian steamer from Belgrade 
and the Sava River. The Mercur came 
puffing valiantly forward, as unconcerned 
as if no whirlwind had swept across her 
path, although she must have been in 
the narrow and dangerous canon of the 
" Iron Gates " when the blast and the 
shower were most furious. On the roads 
leading down the mountain-sides I saw 
long processions of squealing and grunt- 
ing swine, black, white and gray, all at- 
tive and self-willed, fighting each other 
for the right of way. Before each pro- 
cession marched a swineherd playing on 
a rustic pipe, the sounds from which prim- 
itive instrument seemed to exercise Cir- 
cean enchantment upon the rude flocks. 
It was inexpressibly comical to watch the 
masses of swine after they had been en- 
closed in the "folds" — huge tracts fenced 
in and provided with shelters at the cor- 
ners. Each- herd knew its master, and 
as he passed to and fro would salute him 
with a delighted squeal, which died away 
into a series of disappointed and cynical 
groans as soon as the porkers had dis- 
covered that no evening repast was to be 
offered them. Good fare do these Ser- 
vian swine find in the abundant provision 



of acorns in the vast forests. The men 
who spend their lives in restraining the 
vagabond instincts of these vulgar ani- 
mals may perhaps be thought a collec- 
tion of brutal hinds; but, on the con- 
trary, they are fellows of shrewd com- 
mon sense and much dignity of feeling. 
Kara-George, the terror of the Turk at 
the beginning of this century, the majes- 
tic charactisr who won the admiration of 
Europe, whose genius as a soldier was 
praised by Napoleon the Great, and who 
freed his countrymen from bondage, — 
Kara -George was a swineherd in the 
woods of the Schaumadia until the wind 
of the spirit fanned his brow and called 
him from his simple toil to immortalize 
his homely name. 

Master Josef and his fellows in Or- 
sova did not hate the Servians with the 
bitterness manifested toward the Rou- 
manians, yet they considered them as 
aliens and as dangerous conspirators 
against the public weal. " Who knows 
at what moment they may go over to 
the Russians ?" was the constant cry. 
And in process of time they went, but 
although Master Josef had professed 
the utmost willingness to take up arms 
on such an occasion, it does not appear 
that he did 'it, doubtless preferring, on 
reflection, the quiet of his inn and his 
flask of white wine in the courtyard ra- 
ther than an excursion among the trans- 
Danubian hills and the chances of an 
untoward fate at the point of a Servian 
knife. It is not astonishing that the two 
peoples do not understand each other, 
although only a strip of water separates 
their frontiers for a long stretch ; for the 
difference in language and in its written 
form is a most effectual barrier to inter- 
course. The Servians learn something of 
the Hungarian dialects, since they come 
to till the rich lands of the Banat in the 
summer season. Bulgarians and Ser- 
vians by thousands find employment in 
Hungary in summer, and return home 
when autumn sets in. But the dreams 
and ambitions of the two peoples have 
nothing in common. Servia looks long- 
ingly to Slavic unification, and is anxious 
to secure for herself a predominance in 
the new nation to be moulded out of 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



the old scattered elements : Hungary be- 
lieves that the consolidation of the Slavs 
would place her in a dangerous 
and humiliating position, and 
conspires day and night to com- 
pass exactly the reverse of Ser- 
vian wishes. Thus the two coun- 
tries are theoretically at peace 
and practically at war. While 
the conflict of 1877 was in prog- 
ress collisions between Servian 
and Hungarian were of almost 
daily occurrence. 

The Hungarian's intolerance 
of the Slav does not proceed from 
unworthy jealousy, but rather 
from an exaggerated idea of the 
importance of his own country, 
and of the evils which might be- 
fall it if the old Serb stock began 
to renew its ancient glory. In ; 
corners of Hungary, such as Or- '' 
sova, the peasant imagines that ! 
his native land is the main world, \ 
andthattherestofEuropeisanun- I 
necessary and troublesome fringe ; 
around the edges of it. There is a 
story of a gentleman in Pesth who 
went to a dealer in maps and in- "i 
quired for a globus of Hungary, 1 
showing that he imagined it to be ■ 
the whole round earth. ! 

So fair were the land and the ; 
stream after the storm that I lin- 
gered until sunset gazing out over 
river and on Servian hills, and 
did not accept Josef's invitation 
to visit the chapel of the Hunga- 
rian crown that evening. But 
next morning, before the sun was 
high, I wandered alone in the di- 
rection of the Roumanian fron- 
tier, and by accident came upon 
the chapel. It is a modest struc- 
ture in a nook surrounded by tall 
poplars, and within is a simple 
chapel with Latin inscriptions. 
Here the historic crown reposes, 
now that there is no longer any 
use for it at Presburg, the ancient 
capital. Here it was brought by 
pious hands after the troubles between 
Austria and Hungary were settled. Dur- 
ing the revolution the sacred bauble was 



hidden by the command of noblemen to 
whom it had been confided, and the ser- 




vitors who concealed it at the behest of 
their masters were slain, lest in an indis- 
creet moment they might betray the se- 



302 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



cret. For thousands of enthusiasts this 
tiny chapel is the hohest of shrines, and 
should trouble come anew upon Hungary 
in the present perturbed times, the crown 
would perhaps journey once more. 

It seems pitiful that the railway should 
ever invade this out-of-the-way corner 
of Europe. But it is already crawling 
through the mountains : hundreds of 
Italian laborers are putting down the 
shining rails in woods and glens where 
no sounds save the song of birds or the 
carol of the infrequent passer-by have 
heretofore been heard. For the present, 
however, the old-fashioned, comfortless 
diligence keeps the roads : the beribbon- 
ed postilion winds his merry horn, and 
as the afternoon sun is getting low the 
dusty, antique vehicle rattles up to the 
court of the inn, the guard gets down, 
dusts the leather casing of the gun which 
now-a-days he is never compelled to use : 
then he touches his square hat, ornament- 
ed with a feather, to the maids and men 
of the hostelfy. When the mails are 
claimed, the horses refreshed and the 
stage is covered with its leathern hood, 
postilion and guard sit down together in 
a cool corner under the gallery in the 
courtyard and crack various small flasks 
of wine. They smoke their porcelain 
pipes imported from Vienna with the 
ai*- of men of the world who have trav- 
elled and who could tell you a thing or 
two if they liked. They are never tired 
of talking of Mehadia, which is one ot 
their principal stations. The sad-faced 
nobleman, followed by the decorous old 
man-servant in fantastic Magyar livery, 
who arrived in the diligence, has been 
to the baths. The master is vainly seek- 
ing cure, comes eveiy year, and always 
supplies postilion and guard with the 
money to buy flasks of wine. This the 
postilion tells me and my fellows, and 
^■uggests that the "honorable society" 
should follow the worthy nobleman's ex- 
ample. No sooner is it done than pos- 
tilion and guard kiss our hands ; which 
is likewise an evidence that they have 
travelled, are well met with every stran- 
ger and all customs, and know more than 
they say. 

The Romans had extensive establish- 



ments at Mehadia, which they called the 
"Baths of Hercules," and it is in mem- 
ory of this that a statue of the good giant 
stands in the square of the little town. 
Scattered through the hills, many in- 
scriptions to Hercules, to Mercury and 
to Venus have been found during the 
ages. The villages on the road thither 
are few and far between, and are in- 
habited by peasants decidedly Dacian 
in type. It is estimated that a million 
and a half of Roumanians are settled 
in Hungary, and in this section they are 
exceedingly numerous. Men and women 
wear showy costumes, quite barbaric and 
uncomfortable. The women seem deter- 
mined to wear as few garments as pos- 
sible, and to compensate for lack of num- 
ber by brightness of coloring. In many 
a pretty face traces of gypsy blood may 
be seen. This vagabond taint gives an 
inexpressible charm to a face for which 
the Hungarian strain has already done 
much. The coal-black hair and wild, 
mutinous eyes set off to perfection the 
pale face and exquisitely thin lips, the 
delicate nostrils and beautifully moulded 
chin. Angel or devil ? queries the be- 
holder. Sometimes he is constrained to 
think that the possessor of such a face 
has the mingled souls of saint and si- 
ren. The light undertone of melancholy 
which pervades gypsy beauty, gypsy mu- 
sic, gypsy manners, has an extremely 
remarkable fascination for all who per- 
ceive it. Even when it is almost buried 
beneath ignorance and animal craft, it is 
still to be found in the gypsy nature af- 
ter dihgent search. This strange race 
seems overshadowed by the sorrow of 
some haunting memory. Each individ- 
ual belonging to the Tsiganes whom I 
saw impressed me as a fugitive from 
Fate. To look back was impossible ; 
of the present he was -careless ; the fu- 
ture tempted him on. In their music 
one now and then hears hints of a de- 
sire to return to some far-off and half- 
forgotten land. But this is rare. 

There are a large number of "civil- 
ized gypsies," so called, in the neigh- 
borhood of Orsova. I never saw one of 
them without a profound compassion foi 
him, so utterly unhappy did he look in 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



303 



ordinary attire. The musicians who came 
nightly to play on the lawn in front of 
the Hungarian Crown inn belonged to 
these civilized Tsiganes. They had lost 
all the freedom of gesture, the proud, 
half-savage stateliness of those who re- 
mained nomadic 
and untrammel- 
led by local law 
and custom. The 
old instinct was 
in their music, but 
sometimes there 
drifted into it the 
same mixture of 
saint and devil 
which I had seen 
in the "compo- 
site" faces. 

As soon as sup- 
per was set forth, 
piping hot and 
flanked by flagons 
of beer and wine, 
on the lawn, and 
the guests had as- 
sembled to par- 
take of the good 
cheer, while yet 
the afterglow lin- 
gered along the 
Danube, these 
dusky musicians 
appeared and in- 
stalled themselves 
m a corner. The 
old stream's mur- 
mur could not 
drown the pier- 
cing and pathetic 
notes of the vio- 
lin, the gentle 
wail of the guzla 
or the soft thrum- 
ming of the rude 
tambourine. Lit- 
tle poetry as a 
spectacled and 
frosty Austrian of- 
ficer might have 
in his soul, that 
little must have 
been awakened 
by the songs and 



the orchestral performances of the Tsi- 
ganes as the sun sank low. The dusk 
began to creep athwart the lawn, and a 
cool breeze fanned the foreheads of the 
listeners. When the light was all gone, 
these men, as if inspired by the dark- 



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304 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



ness, sometimes improvised most angelic 
melody. There was never any loud or 
boisterous note, never any direct appeal 
to the attention. I invariably forgot the 
singers and players, and the music seem- 
ed a part of the harmony of Nature. 
While the pleasant notes echoed in the 
twilight, troops of jaunty young Hunga- 
rian soldiers, dressed in red hose, dark- 
green doublets and small caps sometimes 
adorned with feathers, sauntered up and 
down the principal street ; the refugees 
huddled in corners and listened with de- 
light ; the Austrian officials lumbered by, 
pouring clouds of smoke from their long, 
strong and inevitable cigars; and the 
dogs forgot their perennial quarrel for 
a few instants at a time. 

The dogs of Orsova and of all the 
neighboring country have many of the 
characteristics of their fellow-creatures in 
Turkey. Orsova is divided into ' ' beats, ' ' 
which are thoroughly and garefuUy pa- 
trolled night and day by bands of dogs 
who recognize the limits of their domain 
and severely resent intrusion. In front 
of the Hungarian Crown a large dog, 
aided by a small yellow cur and a black 
spaniel mainly made up of ears and tail, 
maintained order. The afternoon quiet 
was generally distm-bed about four o'clock 
by the advent of a strange canine, who, 
with that expression of extreme inno- 
cence which always characterizes the 
animal that knows he is doing wrong, 
would • venture on to the forbidden 
ground. A low growl in chorus from 
the three guardians was the inevitable 
preliminary warning. The new-comer 
usually seemed much surprised at this, 
and gave an astonished glance : then, 
wagging his tail merrily, as much as to 
say, "Nonsense ! I must have been mis- 
taken," he approached anew. One of 
the trio of guardians thereupon sallied 
forth to meet him, followed by the others 
a little distance behind. If the strange 
dog showed his teeth, assumed a defiant 
attitude and seem.ed inclined to make 
his way through any number of enemies, 
the trio held a consultation, which, I am 
bound to say, almost invariably result- 
ed in a fight. The intruder would either 
fly yelping, or would work his way across 



the interdicted territory by means of a 
series of encounters, accompanied by 
the most terrific barking, snapping and 
shrieking, and by a very considerable ef- 
fusion of blood. The person who should 
interfere to prevent a dog-fight in Orsova 
would be regarded as a lunatic. Some- 
times a large white dog, accompanied by 
two shaggy animals resembling wolves so 
closely that it was almost impossible to 
believe them guardians of flocks of sheep, 
passed by the Hungarian Crown unchal- 
lenged, but these were probably tried 
warriors whose valor was so well known 
that they were no longer questioned any- 
where. 

The gypsies have in their wagons or 
following in their train small black dogs 
of temper unparalleled for ugliness. It 
is impossible to approach a Tsigane tent 
or wagon without encountering a swarm 
of these diminutive creatures, whose rage 
is not only amusing, but sometimes ra- 
ther appalling to contemplate. Driving 
rapidly by a camp one morning in a 
farmer's cart drawn by two stout horses 
adorned with jingling bells, I was fol- 
lowed by a pack of these dark-skinned 
animals. The bells awoke such rage 
within them that they seemed insane 
under its influence. As they leaped and 
snapped around me, I felt like some trav- 
eller in a Russian forest pursued by hun- 
gry wolves. A dog scarcely six inches 
high, and but twice as long, would spring 
from the ground as if a pound of dy- 
namite had exploded beneath him, and 
would make a desperate effort to throw 
himself into the wagon. Another, howl- 
ing in impotent anger, would jump full 
at a horse's throat, would roll beneath 
the feet of the team, but in some mirac- 
ulous fashion would escape unhurt, and 
would scramble upon a bank to try again. 
It was a real relief when the discouraged 
pack fell away. Had I shot one of the 
animals, the gypsies would have found 
a way to avenge the death of their en- 
terprising though somewhat too zealous 
camp-follower. Animals everywhere on 
these border-lines of the Orient are treat- 
ed with much more tenderness than men 
and women are. The grandee who would 
scowl furiously in this wild region of the 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



305 



Banat if the peasants did not stand by I of respect and submission as he whirled 
the roadside and doff their hats in token | by in his carriage, would not kick a dog 




out of his way, and would manifest the 
utmost tenderness for his horses. 

Much as the Hungarian inhabitants 
20 



of the Banat hate tlie Roumanians, they 
do not fail to appreciate the commercial 
advantages which will follow on the union 



3o6 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



of the two countries by rail. Pretty Or- 
sova may in due time become a bustling 
town filled with grain- and coal-depots 
and with small manufactories. The rail- 
way from Verciorova on the frontier runs 
through the large towns Pitesti and Crai- 
ova on its way to Bucharest. It is a mar- 
vellous railroad : it climbs hills, descends 
into deep gullies, and has as little of 
the air -line about it as a great river 
has, for the contractors built it on the 
principle of "keeping near the surface," 
and they much preferred climbing ten 
high mountains to cutting one tunnel. 
Craiova takes its name, according to a 
somewhat misty legend, from John As- 
san, who was one of the Romano-Bul- 
garian kings, Craiova being a corruption 
of Crai Ivan ("King John"). This John 
was the same who drank his wine from a 
cup made out of the skull of the unlucky 
emperor Baldwin I. The old bans of 
Craiova gave their title to the Rouma- 
nian silver pieces now known as bant. 
Slatina, farther down the line, on the 
river Altu (the Aluta of the ancients), is 
a pretty town, where a proud and brave 
community love to recite to the stranger 
the valorous deeds of their ancestors. It 
is the centre from which have spread out 
most of the modern revolutionary move- 
ments in Roumania. " Little Wallachia," 
in which Slatina stands, is rich in well- 
tilled fields and uplands covered with 
fat cattle : it is as fertile as Kansas, and 
its people seemed to me more agreeable 
and energetic than those in and around 
Bucharest. 

He who clings to the steamers plying 
up and down the Danube sees much ro- 
mantic scenery and many curious types, 
but he loses all the real charm of travel 
in these regions. The future tourist on 
his way to or from Bulgaria and the bat- 
tle-fields of the "new crusade" will be 
wise if he journeys leisurely by farm- 
wagon — he will not be likely to find a 
carriage — along the Hungarian bank 
of the stream. I made the journey in 
April, when in that gentle southward 
climate the wayside was already radiant 
with flowers and the mellow sunshine 
was unbroken by cloud or rain. There 
were discomfort and dust, but there was 



a rare pleasure in the arrival at a quaint 
inn whose exterior front, boldly asserting 
itself in the bolder row of house-fronts 
in a long village street, was uninviting 
enough, but the interior of which was 
charming. In such a hostelry I always 
found the wharfmaster, in green coat and 
cap, asleep in an arm-chair, with the bur- 
gomaster and one or two idle landed pro- 
prietors sitting near him at a card-table, 
enveloped in such a cloud of smoke that 
One could scarcely see the long- necked 
flasks of white wine which they were rap- 
idly emptying. The host was a massive 
man with bulbous nose and sleepy eyes : 
he responded to all questions with a stare 
and the statement that he did not know, 
and seemed anxious to leave everything 
in doubt until the latest moment possible. 
His daughter, who was brighter and less 
dubious in her responses than her father, 
was a slight girl with lustrous black eyes, 
wistful lips, a perfect form, and black 
hair covered with a linen cloth that the 
dust might not come near its glossy 
threads. When she made her appear- 
ance, flashing out of a huge dark room 
which was stone paved and arched over- 
head, and in which peasants sat drinking 
sour beer, she seemed like a ray of sun- 
shine in the middle of night. But there 
was more dignity about her than is to be 
found in most sunbeams : she was mod- 
est and civil in answer, but understood 
no compliments. There was something 
of the princess-reduced-in-circumstances 
in her demeanor. A royal supper could 
she serve, and the linen which she spread 
on the small wooden table in the back 
courtyard smelled of lavender. I took 
my dinners, after the long days' rides, in 
inns which commanded delicious views 
of the Danube — points where willows 
overhung the rushing stream, or where 
crags towered above it, or where it flow^ 
ed in smooth yet resistless might through 
plains in which hundreds of peasants were 
toiling, their red-and-white costumes con- 
trasting sharply with the brilliant blue of 
the sky and the tender green of the foliage. 
If the inns were uniformly cleanly 
and agreeable, as much could not be 
said for the villages, which were some- 
times decidedly dirty. The cottages of 



ALONG THE bANUBE. 



307 



the peasants — that is, of the agri- 
cultural laborers — were window- 
less to a degree which led me to 
look for a small- and dull-eyed 
race, but the eloquent orbs of 
youths and maidens in all this 
Banat land are rarely equalled in 
beauty. I found it in my heart 
to object to the omnipresent 
swine. These cheerful animals 
were sometimes so domesticated 
that they followed their masters 
and mistresses afield in the morn- 
ing. In this section of Hungary, 
as indeed in most parts of Eu- 
rope, the farm-houses are all hud- 
dled together in compact villages, 
and the lands tilled by the dwell- 
ers in these communities extend 
for miles around them. At dawn 
the procession of laborers goes 
forth, and at sunset it returns. 
Nothing can give a better idea 
of rural simplicity and peace than 
the return of the peasants of a 
hamlet at eventide from their 
vineyards and meadows. Just as 
the sun was deluging the broad 
Danube with glory before relin- 
quishing the current to the twi- 
light's shades I came, in the soft 
April evening, into the neighbor- 
hood of Drenkova. A tranquil 
afterglow was here and there vis- 
ible near the hills, which warded 
off the sun's passionate farewell 
glances at the vines and flowers. 
Beside the way, on the green 
banks, sat groups of children, 
clad with paradisiacal simplicity, 
awaiting their fathers and moth- 
ers. At a vineyard's hedge a 
sweet girl, tall, stately and mel- 
ancholy, was twining a garland 
in the cap of a stout young fel- 
low who rested one broad hand 
lightly upon her shoulder. Old 
women, bent and wrinkled, hob- 
bled out from the fields, getting 
help from their sons or grandsons. 
Sometimes I met a shaggy white 
horse drawing a cart in which 
a dozen sonsie lasses, their faces 
browned by wind and their tresses 




io8 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



blown back from their brows in most be- 
witching manner by the hbertine breeze, 
were jolting homeward, singing as they 
went. The young men in their loose lin- 
en garments, with their primitive hoes 
and spades on their shoulders, were as 
goodly specimens of manly strength and 
beauty as one could wish to look upon. 
It hurt me to see them stand humbly 
ranged in rows as I passed. But it was 
pleasant to note the fervor with which 
they knelt around the cross rearing its , 
sainted form amid the waving grasses. 
They knew nothing of the outer world, 
save that from time to time the emperor 
claimed certain of their number for his 
service, and that perhaps their lot might 
lead them to the great city of Buda-Pesth. 
Everywhere as far as the eye could reach 
the land was cultivated with greatest care, 
and plenty seemed the lot of all. The 
peasant lived in an ugly and windowless 
house because his father and grandfather 
had done so before him, not because it 
was necessary. It was odd to see girls 
tall as Dian, and as fair, bending their 
pretty bodies to come out of the con- 
temptible little apertures in the peasant- 
houses called "doors." 

Drenkova is a long street of low cot- 
tages, with here and there a two-story 
mansion to denote that the proprietors 
of the land reside there. As I approach- 
ed the entrance to this street I saw a most 
remarkable train coming to meet me. 
One glance toid me that it was a large 
company of gypsies who had come up 
from Roumania, and were going north- 
ward in search of work or plunder. My 
driver drew rein, and we allowed the 
swart Bohemians to pass on — a courtesy 
which was gracefully acknowledged with 
a singularly sweet smile from the driver 
of the first cart. There were about two 
hundred men and women in this wagon- 
train, and I verily believe that there were 
twice as many children. Each cart, drawn 
by a small Roumanian pony, contained 
two or three families huddled together, 
and seemingly lost in contemplation of 
the beautiful sunset, for your real gyp- 
sy is a keen admirer of Nature and her 
charms. Some of the women were in- 
tensely hideous : age had ma'de them as 



unattractive as in youth they had been 
pretty ; others were graceful and well 
formed. Many wore but a single gar 
ment. The men were wilder than anj 
that I had ever before seen : their mat 
ted hair, their thick lips and their dark 
eyes gave them almost the appearance 
of negroes. One or two of them had 
been foraging, and bore sheeps' heads 
and hares which they had purchased or 
"taken " in the village. They halted as 
soon as they had passed me, and pre- 
pared to go into camp ; so I waited a lit- 
tle to observe them. During the process 
of arranging the carts for the night one 
of the women became enraged at the 
father of her brood because he would 
not aid her in the preparation of the 
simple tent under which the family was 
to repose. The woman ran to him, 
clenching her fist and screaming forth 
invective which, I am convinced, had I 
understood it and had it been directed 
at me, I should have found extremely 
disagreeable. After thus lashing the cul- 
prit with language for some time, she 
broke forth into screams and danced 
frantically around him. He arose, vis- 
ibly disturbed, and I fancied that his 
savage nature would come uppermost, 
and that he might be impelled to give 
her a brutal beating. But he, on the 
contrary, advanced leisurely toward her 
and spat upon the ground with an ex- 
pression of extreme contempt. She seem- 
ed to feel this much more than she would 
have felt a blow, and her fury redoubled. 
She likewise spat ; he again repeated the 
contemptuous act ; and after both had 
gratified the anger which was consum- 
ing them, they walked off in different 
directions. The battle was over, and I 
was not sorry to notice a few minutes 
later that paterfamilias had thought 
better of his conduct, and was himself 
spreading the tent and setting forth his 
wandering Lares and Penates. 

A few hundred yards from the point 
where these wanderers had settled for 
the night I found some rude huts in 
which other gypsies were residing per- 
manently. These huts were mere shel- 
ters placed against steep banks or hedges, 
and within there was no furniture save 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



309 



one or two blankets, a camp-kettle and I or thirteen years of age cix)uched naked 
some wicker baskets. Young girls twelve | about a smouldering fire. They did not 




seem unhappy or hungry ; and none of 
these strange people paid any attention 
to me as I drove on to the inn, which. 



oddly enough, was at some distance from 
the main village, hard by the Danube 
side, in a gully between the mountains. 



3IO 



ALONG THE DANUBE. 



where coal-barges lay moored. The Ser- 
vian Mountains, covered from base to sum- 
mit with dense forests, cast a deep gloom 
over the vale. In a garden on a terrace 
behind the inn, by the light of a flicker- 
ing candle, I ate a frugal dinner, and went 
to bed much impressed by the darkness, 
in such striking contrast to the delightful 
and picturesque scenes through which I 
had wandered all day. 

But I speedily forgot this next morn- 
ing, when the landlord informed me that, 
instead of toiling over the road along the 
crags to Orsova, whither I was return- 
ing, I could embark on a tug-boat bound 
for that cheerful spot, and could thus in- 
spect the grand scenery of the Iron Gates 
from the river. The swift express-boats 
which in time of peace run from Vienna 
to Rustchuk whisk the traveller so rap- 
idly through these famous defiles that 
he sees little else than a panorama of 
high rocky walls. But the slow-moving 
and clumsy tug, with its train of barges 
attached, offers better facilities to the 
lover of natural beauty. We had drop- 
ped down only a short distance below 
Drenkova before we found the river- 
path filled with eddies, miniature whirl- 
pools, denoting the vicinity of the gorges 
into which the great current is compress- 
ed. These whirlpools all have names : 
one is called the "Buffalo;" a second, 
Kerdaps ; a third is known as the " De- 
vourer.." The Turks have a healthy awe 
of this passage, which in old times was 
a terrible trial to these stupid and always 
inefficient navigators. For three or four 
hours we ran in the shade of mighty 
walls of porphyry and granite, on whose 
tops were forests of oaks and elms. High 
up on cliffs around which the eagles cir- 
cle, and low in glens where one some- 
times sees a bear swimming, the sun 
threw a flood of mellow glory. I could 
fancy that the veins of red porphyry run- 
ning along the face of the granite were 
blood - stains, the tragic memorials of 
ancient battles. For, wild and inacces- 
sible as this region seems, it has been 
fought over and through in sternest fash- 
ion. Perched on a little promontory on 
the Servian side is the tiny town of Po- 



retch, where the brave shepherds and 
swineherds fought the Turk, against 
whose oppression they had risen, un- 
til they were overwhelmed by numbers, 
and their leader, Hadji Nikolos, lost his 
head. The Austrians point out with pride 
the cave on the tremendous flank of 
Mount Choukourou where, two centu- 
ries ago, an Austrian general at the 
head of seven hundred men, all that was 
left to him of a goodly army, sustained a 
three months' siege against large Turk- 
ish forces. This cave is perched high 
above the road at a point where it abso- 
lutely commands it, and the government 
of to-day, realizing its importance, has 
had it fortified and furnished with walls 
pierced by loopholes. Trajan fought his 
way through these defiles in the very in- 
fancy of the Christian era ; and in mem- 
ory of his first splendid campaign against 
the Dacians he carved in the solid rock 
the letters, some of which are still vis- 
ible, and which, by their very grandilo- 
quence, offer a mournful commentary on 
the fleeting nature of human greatness. 
Little did he think when his eyes rested 
lovingly on this inscription, beginning — 

IMP. CiES. D. NERViE FILIUS NERVA. 
TRAJANUS. GERM. PONT. MAXIMUS. 

— that Time with profane hand would 
wipe out the memory of many of his 
glories and would undo all the work 
that he had done. 

On we drifted, through huge landlock- 
ed lakes, out of which there seemed no 
issue until we chanced upon a miracu- 
lous corner where there was an outlet 
frowned upon by angry rocks ; on to the 
"Caldron," as the Turks called the most 
imposing portion of the gorge ; on through 
an amphitheatre where densely-wooded 
mountains on either side were reflected 
in smooth water ; on beneath masses 
that appeared about to topple, and over 
shallows where it looked as if we must 
be grounded ; on round a bluff which 
had hidden the sudden opening of the 
valley into a broad sweep, and which 
had hindered us from seeing Orsova 
the Fair nestling closely to her beloved 
mountains. Edward King. 



DANUBIAN DAYS. 



/ 




COSTUMES AT PESTH. 



IF it were not for the people, the jour- 
ney by steamer from Belgrade to Pesth 
would be rather unromantic. When the 



Servian capital is reached in ascending 
the great stream from Galatz and Rust- 
chuk, the picturesque cliffs, the mighty 

311 



312 



DANUBIAN DA YS. 



forests, the moss-grown ruins overhang- 
ing the rushing waters, are all left be- 
hind. Belgrade is not very imposing. 
It lies along a low line of hills border- 
ing the Sava and the Danube, and con- 
tains only a few edifices which are wor- 
thy even of the epithet creditable. The 
white pinnacle from which it takes its 
n?,me — for the city grouped around the 
fori was once called Beograd (" white 
city") — now looks grimy and gloomy. 
The Servians have placed the cannon 
which they took from the Turks in the 
recent war on the ramparts, and have 
become so extravagantly vain in view of 
their exploits that their conceit is quite 
painful to contemplate. Yet it is impos- 
sible to avoid sympathizing to some ex- 
tent with this little people, whose lot has 
been so hard and whose final emanci- 
pation has been so long in arriving. The 
intense affection which the Servian man- 
ifests for his native land is doubtless the 
result of the struggles and the sacrifices 
which he has been compelled to make 
in order to remain in possession of it. 
One day he has been threatened by the 
Austrian or the jealous and unreason- 
able Hungarian : another he has re- 
ceived news that the Turks were march- 
ing across his borders, burning, plunder- 
ing and devastating. There is something 
peculiarly pathetic in the lot of these small 
Danubian states. Nearly every one of 
them has been the cause of combats in 
which its inhabitants have shed rivers 
of blood before they could obtain even 
a fragment of such liberty and peace as 
have long been the possessions of Switz- 
erland and Belgium. It is not surprising 
that the small countries which once form- 
ed part of Turkey-in-Europe are anxious 
to grow larger and stronger by annexa- 
tion of territory and consolidation of pop- 
ulations. They are tired of being feeble : 
it is not amusing. Servia once expected 
that she would be allowed to gain a con- 
siderable portion of Bosnia, her neighbor 
province, but the Austrians are there, 
and would speedily send forces to Bel- 
grade if it were for a moment imagined 
that Prince Milan and his counsellors 
were still greedy for Serajevo and oth- 
er fat towns of the beautiful Bosnian 



lands. Now and then, when a Servian 
burgher has had an extra flask of Ne- 
gotin, he vapors about meeting the Aus- 
trians face to face and driving them into 
the Sava ; but he never mentions it when 
he is in a normal condition. 

The country which Servia has won from 
the Turks in the neighborhood of Nisch, 
and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, 
were no meagre prizes, and ought to 
content the ambition of the young prince 
for some time. It was righteous that the 
Servians should possess Nisch, and that 
the Turks should be driven out by vio- 
lence. The cruel and vindictive barba- 
rian had done everything that he could 
to make himself feared and loathed by 
the Servians. To this day, not far from 
one of the principal gates of the city, on 
the Pirot road, stands the " Skull Tower," 
in the existence of which, I suppose, an 
English Tory would refuse to believe, 
just as he denied his credence to the 
story of the atrocities at Batak. The 
four sides of this tower are completely 
covered, as with a barbarous mosaic, 
with the skulls of Servians slain by their 
oppressors in the great combat of 1809. 
The Turks placed here but a few of their 
trophies, for they slaughtered thousands, 
while the tower's sides could accommo- 
date only nine hundred and fifty -two 
skulls. It is much to the credit of the 
Servians that when they took Nisch in 
1877 they wreaked no vengeance on the 
Mussulman population, but simply com- 
pelled them to give up their arms, and 
informed them that they could return to 
their labors. The presence of the Ser- 
vians at Nisch has already been pro- 
ductive of good : decent roads from that 
point to Sophia are already in process 
of construction, and the innumerable 
brigands who swarmed along the coun- 
try-side have been banished or killed. 
Sophia still lies basking in the mellow 
sunlight, lazily refusing to be cleansed 
or improved. Nowhere else on the bor- 
der-line of the Orient is there a town 
which so admirably illustrates the reck- 
less and stupid neghgence of the Turk. 
Sophia looks enchanting . from a dis- 
tance, but when one enters its narrow 
streets, choked with rubbish and filled 



DANUBIAN DAYS. 




314 



DA NUB IAN DA YS. 



with fetid smells, one is only too glad 
to retire hastily. It would take a quar- 




ter of a century to make Sophia clean. 
All round the city are scattered ancient 
tumuli filled with the remains of the for- 



mer lords of the soil, and they are al- 
most as attractive as the hovels in which 
live the people of to-day. What a des- 
olate waste the Turk has been allowed 
to make of one of the finest countries in 
Europe ! He must be thrust out before 
improvement can come in. Lamartine, 
who was one of the keenest observers 
that ever set foot in Turkey, truly said 
"that civilization, which is so fine in its 
proper place, would prove a mortal poi- 
son to Islamism. Civilization cannot live 
where the Turks are : it will wither away 
and perish more quickly whenever it is 
brought near them. With it, if you could 
acclimate it in Turkey, you could not 
make Europeans, you could not make 
Christians : you would simply unmake 
Turks." 

The enemies of progress and of the 
"Christian dogs " are receding, and rail- 
ways and sanitary improvements will 
come when they are gone. Belgrade 
was a wretched town when the Turks 
had it : now it is civilized. Its history 
is romantic and picturesque, although 
its buildings are not. Servia's legends 
and the actual recitals of the adven- 
turous wars which have occurred within 
her limits would fill volumes. The White 
City has been famous ever since the Ot- 
toman conquest. Its dominant position 
at the junction of two great rivers, at the 
frontier of Christian Europe, at a time 
when turbans were now and then seen 
in front of the walls of Vienna, gave it 
a supreme importance. The Turks ex- 
ultingly named it "the Gate of the Holy 
War." Thence it was that they sallied 
forth on incursions through the fertile 
plains where now the Hungarian shep- 
herd leads his flock and plays upon his 
wooden pipe, undisturbed by the beard- 
ed infidel. The citadel was fought over 
until its walls cracked beneath the suc- 
cessive blows of Christian and Mussul- 
man. Suleiman the Lawgiver, the elector 
of Bavaria, Eugene of Savoy, have trod 
the ramparts which frown on the Dan- 
ube's broad current. The Austrians have 
many memories of the old fortress : they 
received it in 171 8 by the treaty of Pas- 
sarowitz, but gave it up in 1749, to take 
it back again in 1789. The treaty of 



DA NUB IAN DA YS. 



315 






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VILLAGE NEAR SEMLIN. 



Sistova — an infamy which postponed 
the hberation of the suffering peoples 
in Turkey-in-Europe for nearly a hun- 
dred years — compelled the Austrians 
once more to yield it, this time to the 
Turks. In this century how often has 
it been fought over — from the time of 
the heroic Kara George, the Servian 
liberator, to the bloody riots in our days 
which resulted in driving Mussulmans 
definitely from the territory ! 

Everywhere along the upper Servian 
banks of the Danube traces of the old 
epoch are disappearing. The national 
costume, which was graceful, and often 
very rich, is yielding before the prosaic 
— the ugly garments imported from Jew- 
ish tailoring establishments in Vienna and 
Pesth. The horseman with his sack-coat, 
baggy velvet trousers and slouch hat 
looks not unlike a rough rider along 
the shores of the Mississippi River. In 
the interior patriarchal costumes and 
customs are still preserved. On the 
Sava river - steamers the people from 
towns in the shadows of the primeval 
forests which still cover a large portion 
of the country are to be found, and they 
are good studies for an artist. The wo- 



men, with golden ducats braided in their 
hair ; the priests, with tall brimless hats 
and long yellow robes; the men, with 
round skull-caps, leathern girdles with 
knives in them, and waistcoats orna- 
mented with hundreds of glittering but- 
tons, — are all unconscious of the change 
which is creeping in by the Danube, and 
to which they will presently find them- 
selves submitting. The railway will take 
away the lingering bits of romance from 
Servia ; the lovely and lonely monas- 
teries high among the grand peaks in 
the mountain-ranges will be visited by 
tourists from Paris, who will scrawl their 
names upon the very altars ; and Bel- 
grade will be rich in second-class cara- 
vanserais kept by Moses and Abraham. 
After the Austrians who have gone over 
into Bosnia will naturally follow a crowd 
of adventurers from Croatia and from the 
neighborhood of Pesth, and it would not 
be surprising should many of them find 
it for their interest to settle in Servia, al- 
though the government would probably 
endeavor to keep them out. Should the 
movement which L®rd Beaconsfield is 
pleased to call the "Panslavic conspir- 
acy" assume alarming proportions with- 



3i6 



DANUBTAN DA YS. 



in a short time, the Servians would be in 
great danger of losing, for years at least, 
their autonomy. 

The arrival by night at Belgrade, com- 
ing from below, is interesting, and one has 
a vivid recollection ever afterward of 
swarms of barefooted coal-heavers, clad 
in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously 
up and down a gang-plank, as negroes 
do when wooding up on a Southern 
river ; of shouting and swaggering Aus- 
trian customs officials, clad in gorgeous 
raiment, but smoking cheap cigars ; of 
Servian gendarmes emulating the blus- 
ter and surpassing the rudeness of the 
Austrians ; of Turks in transit from the 
Constantinople boat to the craft plying to 
Bosnian river-ports; of Hungarian peas- 
ants in white felt jackets embroidered 
with scarlet thread, or mayhap even 
with yellow ; and of various Bohemian 
beggars, whose swart faces remind one 
that he is still in the neighborhood of 
the East. I had on one occasion, while 
a steamer was lying at Belgrade, time to 
observe the manners of the humbler sort 
of folk in a species of cabaret near the 
river-side and hard by the erratic struc- 
ture known as the custom-house. There 
was a serious air upon the faces of the 
men which spoke well for their cha- 
racters. Each one seemed independ- 
ent, and to a certain extent careless, 
of his neighbor's opinion. It would 
have been impossible, without some 
knowledge of the history of the coun- 
try, to have supposed that these people, 
or even their ancestors, had ever been 
oppressed. Gayety did not prevail, nor 
is there anywhere among the Danubian 
Slavs a tendency to the innocent and 
spontaneous jollity so common in some 
sections of Europe. The Servian takes 
life seriously. I was amused to see that 
each one of this numerous company of 
swineherds or farmers, who had evident- 
ly come in to Belgrade to market, drank 
his wine as if it were a duty, and on leav- 
ing saluted as seriously as if he were 
greeting a distinguished company gath- 
ered to do him honor. That such men 
are cowards, as the English would have 
us believe, is impossible; and in 1877 
they showed that the slander was desti- 



tute of even the slightest foundation in 
fact. 

Morals in Belgrade among certain 
classes perhaps leave something to de- 
sire in the way of strictness ; but the 
Danubian provinces are not supposed 
to be the abodes of all the virtues and 
graces. The Hungarians could not af- 
ford to throw stones at the Servians on 
the score of morality, and the Rouma- 
nians certainly would not venture to try 
the experiment. In the interior of Ser- 
via the population is pure, and the patri- 
archal manner in which the people live 
tends to preserve them so. There is as 
much difference between the sentiment 
in Belgrade and that in the provinces as 
would be found between Paris and a 
French rural district. 

But let us drop details concerning 
Servia, for the brave little country de- 
mands more serious attention than can 
be given to it in one or two brief arti- 
cles. The boat which bears me away 
from the Servian capital has come hither 
from Semlin, the Austrian town on the 
other side of the Sava River. It is a 
jaunty and comfortable craft, as befits 
such vessels as afford Servians their only 
means of communication with the outer 
world. If any but Turks had been squat- 
ted in Bosnia there would have been 
many a smart little steamer running 
down the Sava and around up the Dan- 
ube ; but the baleful Mussulman has 
checked all enterprise wherever he has 
had any foothold. We go slowly, cleav- 
ing the dull-colored tide, gazing, as we 
sit enthroned in easy-chairs on the up- 
per deck, out upon the few public insti- 
tutions of Belgrade — the military college 
and the handsome road leading to the 
garden of Topschidere, where the lilipu- 
tian court has its tiny summer residence. 
Sombre memories overhang this " Can- 
noneer's Valley," this Topschidere, where 
Michael, the son and successor of good 
Milosch as sovereign prince of the na- 
tion, perished by assassination in [868. 
In a few minutes we are whisked round 
a corner, and a high wooded bluff con- 
ceals the White City from our view. 

The Servian women — and more espe- 
cially those belonging to the lower classes 



DANUBIAN DA YS. 



317 



— have a majesty and dignity which are 
very imposing. One is inclined at first 
to believe these are partially due to as- 
sumption, but he speedily discovers that 
such is not the case. Blanqui, the French 
revolutionist, who made a tour through 
Servia in 1840, has given the world a 
curious and interesting account of the 
conversations which he held with Ser- 
vian women on the subject of the op- 
pression from which the nation was suf- 
fering. Everywhere among the common 
people he found virile sentiments express- 
ed by the women, and the princess Lion- 
bitza, he said, was "the prey of a kind 
of holy fever." M. Blanqui described 
her as a woman fifty years old, with a 
martial, austere yet dreamy physiogno- 
my, with strongly -marked features, a 
proud and sombre gaze, and her head 
crowned with superb gray hair braided 
and tied with red ribbon. "Ah!" said 
this woman to him, with an accent in 
her voice which startled him, " if all 
these men round about us here were 
not women, or if they were women like 
jne, we should soon be free from our 
tormentors !" It was the fiery words of 
such women as this which awoke the 
Servian men from the. lethargy into 
. which they were falling after Kara 
George had exhausted himself in heroic 
efforts, and which sent them forth anew 
to fight for their liberties. 

At night, when the moon is good enough 
to shine, the voyage up the river has 
charms, and tempts one to remain on 
deck all night, in spite of the sharp 
breezes which sweep across the stream. 
The harmonious accents of the gentle 
Servian tongue echo all round you : the 
song of the peasants grouped together, 
lying in a heap like cattle to keep warm, 
comes occasionally to your ears ; and if 
there be anything disagreeable, it is the 
loud voices and brawling manners of 
some Austrian troopers on transfer. From 
time to time the boat slows her speed as 
she passes through lines or streets of float- 
ing mills anchored securely in the river. 
Each mill — a small house with sloping 
roof, and with so few windows that one 
wonders how the millers ever manage 
to see their grist — is built upon two boats. 



The musical hum of its great wheel is 
heard for a long distance, and warns 




one of the approach toward these pacific 
industries. The miller is usually on the 
lookout, and sometimes, when a large 



3i8 



DA NUB IAN DA YS. 



steamer is coming up, and he antici- 
pates trouble from the "swell" which 



|lillllllllilllllillW'llli^i'^^^^^^ Mil 'iii'i'fl"[ll||||ljj III 



-Ik 




she may create, he may be seen madly 
gesticulating and dancing upon hrs nar- 
row platform in a frenzy of anxiety for 



the fruits of his toil. A little village on 
a neck of land or beneath a grove shows 
where the wives and children of these 
millers live. The mills are a source of 
prosperity for thousands of humble folk, 
and of provocation to hurricanes of pro- 
fanity on the part of the Austrian, Ital- 
ian and Dalmatian captains who are com- 
pelled to pass them. Stealing through 
an aquatic town of this kind at midnight, 
with the millers all holding out their lan- 
terns, with the steamer's bell ringing vio- 
lently, and with rough voices crying out 
words of caution in at least four lan- 
guages, produces a curious if not a com- 
ical effect on him who has the experience 
for the first time. 

Peaceable as the upper Danube shores 
look, Arcadian as seems the simplicity 
of their populations, the people are torn 
by contending passions, and are watch- 
ed by the lynx-eyed authorities of two or 
three governments. The agents of the 
Omladina, the mysterious society which 
interests itself in the propagation of Pan- 
slavism, have numerous powerful stations 
in the Austrian towns, and do much to 
discontent the Slavic subjects of Francis 
Joseph with the rule of the Hapsburgs. 
There have also been instances of con- 
spiracy against the Obrenovich dynasty, 
now in power in Servia, and these have 
frequently resulted in armed incursions 
from the Hungarian side of the stream 
to the other bank, where a warm recep- 
tion was not long awaited. In the hum- 
blest hamlet there are brains hot with am- 
bitious dreams daringly planning some 
scheme which is too audacious to be 
realized. 

The traveller can scarcely believe this 
when, as the boat stops at some little pier 
which is half buried under vines and 
blossoms, he sees the population indulg- 
ing in an innocent festival with the aid 
of red and white wine, a few glasses of 
beer, and bread and cheese. Families 
mounted in huge yellow chariots drawn 
by horses ornamented with gayly- dec- 
orated harnesses, come rattling into town 
and get down before a weatherbeaten inn, 
the signboard above which testifies to re- 
spect and love for some emperor of long 
ago. Youths and maidens wander arm 



DANUBIAN DA YS. 



319 



in arm by the foaming tide or sit in the 
little arbors crooning songs and chnking 
glasses. Officers strut about, calling each 
other loudly by their titles or responding 
to the sallies of those of their comrades 
who fill the after -deck of the steamer. 
The village mayor in a braided jacket, 
the wharfmaster in semi - military uni- 
form, and the agent of the steamboat 
company, who appears to have a re- 
markable penchant for gold lace and 
buttons, render the throng still more 
motley. There is also, in nine cases 
out of ten, a band of tooting musicians, 
and as the boat moves away national 
Hungarian and Austrian airs are play- 
ed. He would be indeed a surly fellow 
who should not lift his cap on these oc- 
casions, and he would be repaid for his 
obstinacy by the very blackest of looks. 
Carlowitz and Slankamen are two his- 
toric spots which an Hungarian, if he 
feels kindly disposed toward a stranger, 
will point out to him. The former is 
known to Americans by name only, as 
a rule, and that because they have seen 
it upon bottle-labels announcing excel- 
lent wine ; but the town, with its ancient 
cathedral, its convents, and its "chapel 
of peace " built on the site of the struc- 
ture in which was signed the noted peace 
of 1699, deserves a visit. Rumor says that 
the head -quarters of the Omladina are 
very near this town, so that the foreign 
visitor must not be astonished if the local 
police seem uncommonly solicitous for 
his welfare while he remains. At Slan- 
kamen in 1 69 1 the illustrious margrave 
of Baden administered such a thrashing 
to the Turks that they fled in the great- 
. est consternation, and it was long before 
they rallied again. 

Thus, threading in and out among 
the floating mills, pushing through reedy 
channels in the midst of which she nar- 
rowly escapes crushing the boats of fish- 
ers, and carefully avoiding the moving 
banks of sand which render navigation 
as difficult as on the Mississippi, the 
boat reaches Peterwardein, high on a 
mighty mass of rock, and Neusatz op- 
posite, connected with its neighbor for- 
tress-town by a bridge of boats. Al- 
though within the limits of the Austria- 



Hungarian empire, Neusatz is almost 
entirely Servian in aspect .and popula- 
tion, and Peterwardein, which marks 




iliiii'lilliliiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 

the military confines of Slavonia, has a 
large number of Servian inhabitants. It 
was the proximity and the earnestness in 



320 



DANUBIAN DA YS. 



their cause of these people which induced 
the Hungarians to agree to the military- 
occupation of Bosnia and the Herzego- 
vina. At one time the obstinate Mag- 
yars would have liked to refuse their 
adhesion to the decisions of the Berlin 
Congress, but they soon thought better 
of that. Peterwardein is the last really 
imposing object on the Danube before 
reaching Pesth. It is majestic and sol- 
emn, with its gloomy castle, its garrison 
which contains several thousand soldiers, 
and its prison of state. The remem- 
brance that Peter the Hermit there put 
himself at the head of the army with 
which the Crusades were begun adds to 
the mysterious and powerful fascination 
of the place. I fancied that I could see 
the lean and fanatical priest preaching 
before the assembled thousands, hurling 
his words down upon them from some 
lofty pinnacle. No one can blame the 
worthy Peter for undertaking his mission 
if the infidels treated Christians in the 
Orient as badly then as they do to-day. 
Centuries after Peter slept in consecrated 
dust the Turks sat down before Peter- 
wardein to besiege it, but they had only 
their labor for their pains, for Prince 
Eugene drove them away. This was 
in 1716. It seems hard to believe that 
a hostile force of Turks was powerful 
enough to wander about Christendom 
a little more than a century and a half 
ago. 

After passing Peterwardein and Neu- 
satz the boat's course lies through the 
vast Hungarian plain, which reminds 
the American of some of the rich lands 
in the Mississippi bottom. Here is life, 
lusty, crude, seemingly not of Europe, 
but rather of the extreme West or East. 
As far as the eye can reach on either 
hand stretch the level acres, dotted with 
her4s of inquisitive swine, with horses 
wild and beautiful snorting and gam- 
bolling as they hear the boat's whistle, 
and peasants in white linen jackets and 
trousers and immense black woollen hats. 
Fishers by hundreds balance in their lit- 
tle skiffs on the small whirlpool of waves 
made by the steamer, and sing gajdy. 
For a stretch of twenty miles the course 
may lie near an immense forest, where 



millions of stout trees stand in regular 
rows, where thousands of oaks drop 
acorns every year to fatten thousands 
upon thousands of pigs. Cattle stray in 
these woods, and sometimes the peas- 
ant-farmer has a veritable hunt before 
he can find his own. Afar in the wood- 
ed recesses of Slavonia many convents 
of the Greek religion are hidden. Their 
inmates lead lives which have little or 
no relation to anything in the nineteenth 
century. For them wars and rumors of 
wars, Russian aggression, Austrian an- 
nexation, conspiracies by Kara George- 
witch, Hungarian domination in the Cab- 
inet at Vienna, and all such trivial mat- 
ters, do not exist. The members of these 
religious communities are not like the 
more active members of the clergy of 
their Church, who unquestionably have 
much to do with promoting war and sup- 
porting it when it is in aid of their na- 
tionality and their religion. 

One of the most remarkable sights in 
this region is a herd of the noble "cat- 
tle of the steppes," the beasts in which 
every Hungarian takes so much pride. 
These cattle are superb creatures, and 
as they stand eying the passers-by one 
regrets that he has not more time in 
which to admire their exquisite white 
skins, their long symmetrical horns and 
their shapely limbs. They appear to be 
good-tempered, but it would not be wise 
to risk one's self on foot in their imme- 
diate neighborhood. 

As for the fishermen, some of them 
seem to prefer living on the water rather 
than on dry land. Indeed, the marshy 
borders of the Danube are not very 
healthy, and it is not astonishing that 
men do not care to make their homes 
on these low lands. There are several 
aquatic towns between Pesth and the 
point at which the Drava (or Drau), a 
noble river, empties its waters into the 
Danube. Apatin is an assemblage of 
huts which appear to spring from the 
bosom of the current, but as the steamer 
approaches one sees that these huts are 
built upon piles driven firmly into the 
river-bed, and between these singular 
habitations are other piles upon which 
nets are stretched. So the fisherman, 



DANUBIAN DA YS. 



32T 



without going a hun- 
dred yarrJs from his 
own door, traps the 
wily denizens of the 
Danube, prepares 
them for market, and 
at night goes peace- 
fully to sleep in his 
rough bed, lulled by 
the rushing of the 
strong current be- 
neath him. I am 
bound to confess that 
the fishermen of Apa- 
tin impressed me as 
being rather rheu- 
matic, but perhaps 
this was only a fancy. 
Besdan, with its 
low hills garnished 
with windmills and 
its shores lined with 
silvery willows, is the 
only other point of in- 
terest, save Mohacz, 
before reaching 
Pesth. Hour after 
hour the traveller 
sees the same pano- 
rama of steppes cov- 
ered with swine, cattle 
and horses, with occa- 
sional farms — their 
outbuildings protect- 
ed against brigands 
and future wars by 
stout walls — and with 
pools made by inun- 
dations of the impet- 
uous Danube. Mo- 
hacz is celebrated for 
two tremendous bat- 
tles in the past, and 
for a fine cathedral, 
a railway and a coal- 
ing-station at present. 
Louis II., king of 
Hungary, was there 
undone by Suleiman 
in 1526; and there, 
a hundred and fifty 
years later, did the 
Turks come to sor- 
row by the efforts of 
21 




322 



BA NUB IAN DA YS. 



the forces under Charles IV. of Lor- 
raine. 

Just as I was beginning to beheve that 
the slow-going steamer on which I had 
embarked my fortunes was held back 
by enchantment — for we were half a day 
ascending the stream from Mohacz — we 
came in sight of a huge clifif almost inac- 
cessible from one side, and a few minutes 
later could discern the towers of Buda 
and the mansions of Pesth. While 
nearing the landing-place and hasten- 
ing hither and yon to look after various 
small bundles and boxes, I had occasion 
to address an Hungarian gentleman. In 
the course of some conversation which 
followed I remarked that Pesth seemed 
a thriving place, and that one would 
hardly haVe expected to find two such 
flourishing towns as Vienna and Pesth 
so near each other. 

" Oh," said he with a little sneer which 
his slight foreign accent (he was speak- 
ing French) rendered almost ludicrous, 
"Vienna is a smart town, but it is noth- 
ing to this !" And he pointed with pride 
to his native city. 

Although I could not exactly agree 
with this extravagant estimate of the 
extent of Pesth, I could not deny that 
it was vastly superior to my idea of it. 
When one arrives there from the south- 
east, after many wanderings among semi- 
barbaric villages and little cities on the 
outskirts of civilization, he finds Pesth 
very impressive. The Hungarian shep- 
herds and the boatmen who ply between 
the capital and tiny forts below fancy that 
it is the end of the world. They have 
vaguely heard of Vienna, but their pa- 
triotism is so intense and their round 
of life so circumscribed that they never 
succeed in forming a definite idea of its 
proportions or its location. Communi- 
cation between the two chief towns of 
the Austria - Hungarian einpire is also 
much less frequent than one would im- 
agine. The Hungarians go but little to 
Vienna, even the members of the no- 
bility preferring to consecrate their re- 
sources to the support of the splendors 
of their own city rather than to con- 
tribute them to the Austrian metropolis. 
Seven hours' ride in what the Austri- 



ans are bold enough to term an express- 
train covers the distance between Vien- 
na and Pesth, yet there seems to be an 
abyss somewhere on the route which 
the inhabitants are afraid of. Pride, a 
haughty determination not to submit to 
centralization, and content with their sur- 
roundings make the Hungarians sparing 
of intercourse with their Austrian neigh- 
bors. "We send them prime ministers, 
and now and then we allow them a 
glimpse' of some of our beauties in one 
of their palaces, but the latter does not 
happen very often," once said an Hun- 
garian friend to me. 

An American who should arrive in 
Pesth fancying that he was about to 
see a specimen of the dilapidated towns 
of "effete and decaying Europe" would 
find himself vastly mistaken. The beau- 
tiful and costly modern buildings on ev- 
ery principal street, the noble bridges 
across the vast river, the fine railway- 
stations, the handsome theatres, the par 
latial hotels, would explain to him why 
it is that the citizens of Pesth speak of 
their town as the "Chicago of the East." 
There was a time when it really seemed 
as if Pesth would rival, if not exceed, 
Chicago in the extent of her commerce, 
the vivacity and boldness of her enter- 
prises and the rapid increase of her pop- 
ulation. Austria and Hungary were alike 
the prey of a feverish agitation which 
pervaded all classes. In a single day at 
Vienna as many as thirty gigantic stock 
companies were formed ; hundreds of 
superb structures sprang up monthly ; 
people who had been beggars but a few 
months before rode in carriages and 
bestowed gold by handfuls on whoever 
came first. The wind or some myste- 
rious agency which no one could ex- 
plain brought this financial pestilence to 
Pesth, where it raged until the Krach — 
the Crash, as the Germans very proper- 
ly call it — came. After the extraordinary 
activity which had prevailed there came 
gloom and stagnation; but at last, as in 
America, business in Pesth and in Hun- 
gary generally is gradually assuming so- 
lidity and contains itself within proper 
bounds. The exciting period had one 
beneficial feature : it made Pesth a hand- 



DANUBIAN DA VS. 



323 



some city. There are 
no quays in Europe 
more substantial and 
elegant than those 
along the Danube in 
the Hungarian cap- 
ital, and no hotels, 
churches and man- 
sions more splendid 
than those fronting 
on these same quays.. 
At eventide, when 
the whole population 
comes out for an air- 
ing and loiters by the 
parapets which over- 
look the broad rush- 
ing river, when innu- 
merable lights gleam 
from the boats an- 
chored on either 
bank, and when the 
sound of music and 
song is heard from 
half a hundred win- 
dows, no city can 
boast a spectacle 
more animated. At 
ten o'clock the streets 
are deserted. Pesth 
is exceedingly proper 
and decorous as soon 
as the darkness has 
fallen, although I do 
remember to have 
seen a torchlight pro- 
cession there during 
the Russo-Turkish 
war. The inhabitants 
were so enthusiastic 
over the arrival of a 
delegation of Mussul- 
man students f r o m 
Constantinople that 
they put ten thousand 
torches in line and 
marched until a late 
hour, thinking, per- 
haps, that the lurid 
light on the horizon 
might be seen as far 
as Vienna, and might 
serve as a warning 
to the Austrian gfov- 




324 



DANUBIAN DA YS. 



ernment not to go too far in its sympa- 
thy with Russia. 

Buda-Pesth is the name by which the 
Hungarians know their capital, and Bu- 
da is by no means the least important 
portion of the city. It occupies the ma- 
jestic and rugged hill directly opposite 
Pesth — a hill so steep that a tunnel con- 
taining cars propelled upward and down- 
ward by machinery has been arranged to 
render Buda easy of access. Where the 
hill slopes away southward there are 
various large villages crowded with Ser- 
vians, Croatians and Low Hungarians, 
who huddle together in a rather unciv- 
ilized manner. A fortress where there 
were many famous fights and sieges in 
the times of the Turks occupies a sum- 
mit a little higher than Buda, so that in 
case of insurrection a few hot shot could 
be dropped among the inhabitants. Cu- 
riously enough, however, there are thou- 
sands of loyal Austrians, German by birth, 
living in Buda — or Ofen, as the Teutons 
call it — whereas in Pesth, out of the two 
hundred thousand inhabitants, scarcely 
three thousand are of Austrian birth. As 
long as troops devoted to Francis Joseph 
hold Buda there is little chance for the 
citizens of Pesth to succeed in revolt. 
Standing on the terrace of the rare old 
palace on Buda's height, I looked down 
on Pesth with the same range of vision 
that I should have had in a balloon. 
Every quarter of the city would be fully 
exposed to an artillery fire from these 
gigantic hills. 

Buda is not rich in the modern im- 
provements which render Pesth so no- 
ticeable. I found no difficulty in some 
of the nooks and corners of this quaint 
town in imagining myself back in the 
Middle Ages. Tottering churches, im- 
mensely tall houses overhanging yawn- 
ing and precipitous alleys, markets set 
on little shelves in the mountain, hovels 
protesting against sliding down into the 
valley, whither they seemed inevitably 
doomed to go, succeeded one another 
in rapid panorama. Here were costume, 
theatrical effect, artistic grouping : it was 
like Ragusa, Spalatro and Sebenico. Old 
and young women sat on the ground in 
the markets, as our negroes do in Lynch- 



burg in Virginia : they held up fruit and 
vegetables and shrieked out the prices 
in a dialect which seemed a compound 
of Hungarian and German. Austrian 
soldiers and Hungarian recruits, the for- 
mer clad in brown jackets and blue hose, 
the latter in buff doublets and red trou- 
sers, and wearing feathers in their caps, 
marched and countermarched, appar- 
ently going nowhere in particular, but 
merely keeping up discipline by means 
of exercise. 

The emperor comes often to the fine 
palace on Buda hill, and sallies forth 
from it to hunt with some of the nobles 
on their immense estates. The empress 
is passionately fond of Hungary, and 
spends no small portion of her time 
there. The Hungarians receive this con- 
sideration from their sovereign lady as 
very natural, and speak of her as a per- 
son of great good sense. The German 
and Slavic citizens of Austria say that 
there are but two failings of which Her 
Imperial Majesty can be accused — she 
loves the Hungarians and she is too fond 
of horses. Nothing dehghts the citizens 
of Pesth so much as to find that the Slavs 
are annoyed, for there is no love lost be- 
tween Slav and Magyar. A natural an- 
tipathy has been terribly increased by 
the fear on the part of Hungary that she 
may lose her influence in the composite 
empire one day, owing to the Slavic re- 
generation. 

At Pesth they do not speak of the 
"beautiful blue Danube," because there 
the river ceases to be of that color, which 
Johann Strauss has so enthusiastically 
celebrated. But between Vienna and 
Pesth the blue is clearly perceptible, and 
the current is lovely even a few miles 
from the islands in the stream near the 
Hungarian capital. The Margarethen- 
Insel, which is but a short distance above 
Pesth, is a little paradise. It has been 
transformed by private munificence into 
a rich garden full of charming shaded 
nooks and rare plants and flowers. In 
the middle of this pleasure-ground are 
extensive bath - houses and mineral 
springs. Morning, noon and night gyp- 
sy bands make seductive music, and the 
notes of their melodies recall the strange 



DANUBIAN DA YS. 



325 



lands far away down the stream — I Banat and the savage Servian moun- 
Roumania, the hills .and valleys of the | tains. Along the river -side there are 




other resorts in which, in these days, 
when business has not yet entirely re- 
covered from the Krach, there are mul- 



titudes of loungers. In midsummer no 
Hungarian need go farther than these 
baths of Pesth to secure rest and restore 



326 



DA NUBIAN DA YS. 



aealth. The Romans were so pleased 
with the baths in the neighborhood that 
chey founded a colony on the site of 
Buda-Pesth, although they had no par- 
dcular strategic reasons for doing so. 
As you sit in the pleasant shade you will 
probably hear the inspiring notes of the 
Rakaczy, the march of which the Hun- 
garians are so passionately fond, which 
recalls the souvenirs of their revolutions 
and awakens a kind of holy exaltation 
in their hearts. The Rakoczy has been 
often enough fantastically described : 
some hear in it the gallop of horsemen, 
the clashing of arms, the songs of wo- 
men and the cries of wounded men. A 
clever Frenchman has even written two 
columns of analysis of the march, and 
he found in it nearly as much as there 
is in Goethe's Faust. These harmless 
fancies are of little use in aiding to a 
veritable understanding of the wonder- 
ful march. It suffices to say that one 
cannot hear it played, even by a stroll- 
ing band of gypsies, without a strange 
fluttering of the heart, an excitement 
and an enthusiasm which are beyond 
one's control. A nation with such a 
Marseillaise as the Rakoczy certainly 
ought to go far in time of war. 

The Hungarians are a martial people, 
and are fond of reciting their exploits. 
Every old guide in Pesth will tell you, 
in a variegated English which will pro- 
voke your smiles, all the incidents of the 
Hungarian revolution, the events of 1848 
and 1849 — ^°^ ^^ Austrians were driv- 
en across the great bridge over the Dan- 
ube, etc. — with infinite gusto. The hum- 
blest wharf- laborer takes a vital interest 
in the welfare of his country, even if he 
is not intelligent enough to know from 
what quarter hostilities might be expect- 
ed. There is a flash in an Hungarian's 
eye when he speaks of the events of 
1848 which is equalled only by the 
lightnings evoked from his glance by 
the magic echoes of the Rakoczy. 

The peasantry round about Pesth, and 
the poor wretches, Slavic and Hungarian, 
who work on the streets, seem in sad 
plight. A friend one day called my at- 
tention to a number of old women, most 
miserably clad, barefooted and bent with 



age and infirmities, carrying stones and 
bricks to a new building. The spectacle 
was enough to make one's heart bleed, 
but my friend assured me that the old 
women were happy, and that they lived 
on bread and an occasional onion, with 
a little water for drink or sometimes a 
glass of adulterated white wine. The 
men working with them looked even 
worse fed and more degraded than the 
women. In the poor quarters of Pesth, 
and more especially those inhabited by 
the Jews, the tenements are exceedingly 
filthy, and the aroma is so uninviting that 
one hastens away from the streets where 
these rookeries abound. The utmost 
civility, not to say servility, may always 
be expected of the lower classes : some 
of them seize one's hand and kiss it 
as the Austrian servants do. Toward 
strangers Hungarians of all ranks are 
unfailingly civil and courteous. A sim- 
ple letter of introduction will procure one 
a host of attentions which he would not 
have the right to expect in England or 
America. 

The mound of earth on the bank of 
the Danube near the quays of Pesth 
represents the soil of every Hungarian 
province ; and from that mound the 
emperor of Austria, when he was crown- 
ed king of Hungary, was forced to shake 
his sword against the four quarters of 
the globe, thus signifying his intention 
of defending the country from any attack 
whatsoever. Thus far he has succeeded 
in doing it, and in keeping on good terms 
with the legislative bodies of the country, 
without whose co - operation he cannot 
exercise his supreme authority. These 
bodies are a chamber of peers, recruited 
from the prelates, counts and such aristo- 
crats as sit there by right of birth, and a 
second chamber, which is composed of 
four hundred and thirteen deputies elect- 
ed from as many districts for the term 
of three years, and thirty-four delegates 
from the autonomous province of Croatia- 
Slavonia. The entrance to the diet is 
guarded by a frosty-looking servitor in an 
extravagant Hungarian uniform, jacket 
and hose profusely covered with bril- 
liant braids^ and varnished jack-boots. 
The deputies when in session are quiet, 



DANUBIAN DA YS. 



327 



orderly and dignified, save when the 
word "Russian" is pronounced. It is 
a word which arouses all their hatred. 

Buda-Pesth is about to undergo a for- 
midable series of improvements notwith- 
standing the illusions which were dis- 
persed by the Krach. One of the most 
conspicuous and charm- 
ing municipal displays 
in the Paris Exposition 
is the group of charts 
and plans sent from 
Pesth. The patriot 
Deak is to have a co- 
lossal monument ; the 
quays are to be render- 
ed more substantial 
against inundations than 
they are at present ; and 
many massive public ed- 
ifices are to be erected. 
The Danube is often 
unruly, and once near- 
ly destroyed the city of 
Pesth, also doing much 
damage along the slopes 
of Buda. If an inunda- 
tion should come within 
the next two or three 
years millions of florins' 
worth of property might 
be swept away in a sin- 
gle night. The opera, 
the principal halls of 
assembly and the ho- 
tels of Pesth will chal- 
lenge comparison with 
those of any town of 
two hundred thousand 
population in the world ; and the Grand 
Hotel Hungaria has few equals in cities 
yf the largest size. 

The Hungarians are a handsome race, 
and the people of Pesth and vicinity have 
especial claims to attention for their beau- 
ty. The men of the middle and upper 
classes are tall, slender, graceful, and 
their features are exceedingly regular 
and pleasing. The women are so re- 
nowned that a description of their 
charms is scarcely necessary. Beauti- 
ful as are the Viennese ladies in their 
early youth, they cannot rival their fel- 



low-subjects of Hungary. The Austrian 
woman grows fat, matronly and rather 
coarse as she matures : the Hungarian 
lady of forty is still as willowy, graceful 
and capricious as she was at twenty. 
The peasant -women, poor things ! are 
ugly, because they work from morning 




SLAV WOMAN IN PESTH. 

till night in the vineyards, toiling until 
their backs are broken. The wine which 
the beauties drink costs their humbler 
sisters their life-blood, their grace, their 
happiness. The sunshine of a thousand 
existences is imprisoned in the vintages 
of Pressburg and Carlowitz. Poor, home- 
ly toilers in the fields ! Poor human crea- 
tures transformed into beasts of burden ! 
The Hungarian nation owes it to itself to 
emancipate these struggling women and 
show them the way to better things. 
Edward King. 








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